“They had a ‘welcome to the new guy’ party for me a couple days ago. Bowling and then drinking. They think I’m an oddball geek brainiac, not a detective.”
I was on duty, couldn’t attend the party. I know a little about Milo from the newspapers. He was promoted over others with long-standing careers marked by accomplishment, so it’s easy to understand resentment toward him. Milo is smart, a member of Mensa. He got his job on the homicide unit because as a patrol officer, he solved one case of serial arson and two cases of serial rape. They weren’t his investigations. He did it for fun, as a hobby, by triangulating the likely areas of residence of the criminals. Once within a third of a mile, once within two hundred yards, once to the exact building.
“What makes you say that?” I ask.
The dark circles under his eyes look like charcoal smudges. He smirks. “Because I’m a people person, and my extreme powers of empathy allow me to look into the hearts and minds of others.” This makes me laugh, and he laughs a little, too. “Believe me,” he says, “I could tell they don’t like me.”
“How did you solve those cases that got you promoted?” I ask.
“A couple psychologists-slash-criminal-profilers developed a computer triangulation program. Police departments are reticent to use it because it’s expensive, and because a lot of cops are convinced that their brilliant crime-solving techniques, also known as hunches, are superior to scientific method.”
“If it’s so expensive, how did you get it, and how come I didn’t hear how you did it?”
“I pirated the software, and since I stole it, I lied about it.”
I laugh again. He’s odd, but I have to admit, he’s an entertaining little fucker. “You’re one up on me,” I say. “I didn’t even get a ‘welcome to the new guy’ party.”
“They don’t like you either,” he says.
“Is this more of your people-person intuition?”
“After they got drunk, they bitched about you. The team doesn’t trust you because you got a job in an elite unit for political reasons. That’s not supposed to happen. You shot one man and have been shot twice yourself. That speaks of carelessness. You got medals for both those fuckups. That pisses them off. As an inspector, your pay grade is higher than the rest of us detective-sergeants. You make more money than we do. That pisses them off even more. They don’t want to work with you. I remember hearing the phrase ‘dangerous Lapland redneck reindeer-fucker.’”
I thought they were just standoffish because I’m new and haven’t proven myself yet, that it will pass when I do prove myself. Maybe I was wrong.
“Actually,” Milo says, “Saska Lindgren said some good things about you. He told the others he thought they should give you a chance.”
Saska is half Gypsy. An outsider by race. It stands to reason he would be more receptive to someone like me. According to many, including my boss, he’s one of Finland’s best homicide cops. He’s served as a UN peacekeeper in Palestine, worked for the ICTY-the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia-investigating war crimes, executions and mass graves in Bosnia, and identified bodies in Thailand after the tsunami of 2004 that devastated the region. The numerous certificates of achievement lining the walls of his office attest to the many educational police conferences he’s attended worldwide. He’s also one of Finland’s leading experts in bloodstain-pattern analysis. Additionally, he’s involved in many works that benefit the community. He’s such a do-gooder that, up to now, I found him annoying. Maybe I’ll try to readjust my opinion.
“Since we’re the black sheep,” Milo says, “by default, we may find ourselves working together a lot.”
The guys from Mononen show up for Rauha Anttila’s body. We watch them scrape up her corpse-then we move on.
3