of time, leave the country and live on our accrued ill-gotten wealth? Just cite our injuries and retire from the force? What?”
He chuckles. “Well, speaking for myself, I’ll just go back to being a cop, solve crimes, that sort of thing. I like my job. Why would I leave it?”
I mull it over. “I guess that goes for me, too. Like they say: do what you know. But why kill Osmo and Jyri? They’ve done nothing overt to harm us.”
“And they haven’t because they’re too smart for that. They put Jan Pitkänen together with Veikko Saukko and knew the consequences would be disastrous for us. And with them gone, I don’t think that leaves anyone alive who knows enough to get us indicted for any crimes. And without Osmo to cover his ass, Pitkänen has to be prepared to do a prison jolt as a cop killer, and it would be a long one. I doubt he’s prepared for that.”
“And if I forbade it?”
“I would ignore you. I’m going to leave the Crown Vic here tomorrow and take a bus to my summer cottage to get my sailboat tonight. I’m going to Roope Malinen’s cottage. I’ll take some small belongings to implicate him in the video. His boat is docked there and I want to check it out. I either have to steal his on Go Day, or make mine look like his, swap the GPSs on our crafts, put his serial number on my boat, and make it appear that he used it for transportation while committing his string of barbarous murders. Stealing Malinen’s boat seems the more elegant solution. Then I’m coming to Porvoo. I’m going to dock my boat near your house and start working from there. Soon, I’ll sail down and surveil Saukko’s place from the sea and find out what ‘driving’ refers to.”
“Yeah, I guess we should move tomorrow,” I say. “How do you sail with one hand?”
“I don’t. I can’t negotiate the ropes or tie a proper knot, so I put a big engine in the back and keep the sails furled.”
My phone rings. It’s a doctor from Meilahti Hospital. He’s sorry to inform me that Mirjami is dead.
“How can that be?” I ask. “I just saw her today. She was talking, her prognosis was good.”
“Such severe burns cause trauma that sometimes the body can’t cope with and it just shuts down. The burns on the lower portion of her body were very bad indeed. Nothing went wrong, her treatment was excellent. She just died anyway. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“This is now a murder investigation. I want an autopsy performed.” I’m angry with the doctor, want to shoot the messenger, and ring off.
“Milo, it’s bad news. Mirjami died.”
Jenna and Sweetness hear me. We all just sit and stare at one another for a while. There are no words. After a while, Sweetness motions to me with a tilt of his head to come to the dining room table. He pours us all Koskenkorva, and we drink to Mirjami. I’m glad that the last time I saw her, I lied about my feelings for her. At least in that small way, she could die believing what she wanted to be the truth.
None of us speak for the better part of half an hour, then Milo says, “You still think my plan is too harsh?”
“Do what you want,” I say. “Jan Pitkänen belongs to me.” He and I don’t have a vendetta, we have a reckoning. His blowing up the car, burning Mirjami to a crisp and hurting Jenna in a murder attempt created a situation in which one of us must die. I wonder if he recognizes this as well. I wonder if he created this situation out of jealousy, because he was the golden boy of illegal activity, Osmo Ahtiainen’s chief axman, and then all the dope money and power that goes with it, illegal surveillance, strong-arm work, as well as the nation’s most prestigious crime cases, all fell to me. I would have been happy to hand it all over to him. Spilt milk. Now he has to play for blood.
Even as I plot revenge, I realize that my thoughts about them are false and I want to push them all out of my mind. I’m sickened by corruption, death and murder. I want to live in harmony with my family. Nothing more.
Kate comes out of the bedroom in her bathrobe, a smile on her face. She says hello to