the Beagle Boys. They have SWAT units, handle riots, special ops and counterterrorism. In the past, in a case such as this, normal police would have waited on the Beagle Boys to bring in snipers and hostage negotiators. The Finnish National Police, however, made a recent decision-because schoolkids can’t wait while they’re being shot to pieces-that the first officers on the scene must respond in the event of a school shooting. The responsibility falls to me and Milo.
We enter the gate and scurry to the front door. My heart pounds and blood roars in my ears.
Milo looks calm enough. His face doesn’t betray how he feels inside. “How do you want to handle it?” he asks.
“Have you tried out your modified pistol?” I ask.
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t. If it misfires, you or someone else could die.”
“It works.”
Adrenaline makes my hands shake. I draw my Glock. “You haven’t talked down anyone with a gun. I have. If possible, let me handle it.”
I don’t say, but I’m certain he knows, that I tried such a thing once, not long ago. I failed, and my friend blew his brains out before I could stop him.
I open the front door. Milo crouches and darts through it. I don’t crouch. My bad knee won’t allow it. There’s no point anyway. Thirty feet down a hall decorated with crayon artwork by students sits Vesa Legion Korhonen with a boy of about eight clutched in one arm. He has a chrome snub-nosed. 357 Magnum pressed to the child’s head. A bottle of Finlandia vodka rests on the floor beside him.
I level my Glock at his head and walk forward.
“You,” he says. “Dis is pwovidenthial.”
“Vesa,” I ask, “what are you doing, and why are you doing it?”
“I am saving souws,” he says. “Da childwen’s and my own. And now youahs.”
With peripheral vision, I see Milo to my right and behind me. He circles farther to the right, close to the wall of the hall, trying to keep Legion’s attention on me and away from him.
“You made me dwink da whoe bottle. You hewt me,” Legion says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
The boy is motionless and quiet. A dark stain spreads around his crotch. My own bladder wants to let go. I tell the child to stay calm and not to move.
“Put yooah gun down,” Legion says.
“No.”
“I wiah shoot dis boy.”
I lower the Glock to my side, but inch closer. With my bad knee, I can’t move fast. I have to get within arm’s reach of Legion if I’m to have any chance of restraining him. Given his. 357, though, I can’t imagine how I might accomplish that.
“Have you hurt anyone?” I ask.
“Oh, yeth. Many.” He chugs vodka.
Milo continues to slink along the wall. He’s almost at a right angle to Legion now.
“What would it take to get you to let the boy go?” I ask.
“Hmm,” he says. “Wet me think. I know. Shoot youahthelf.”
“Why?”
“You toad me, ‘Bottaw to wips and dwink.’ I’m tewing you, gun to head and puu twigger.”
Fuck. I don’t know what to do. I put the Glock to my temple. It pounds from the migraine. I’m still inching forward, just a little more than three feet away from him now.
Legion jams the Magnum harder against the boy’s head. The child whimpers. “Shoot youahthelf,” Legion says again.
I’m at a loss. I might consider shooting myself, if it would save the boy’s life, but there’s no reason to think my suicide would change anything. I wait, terrified.
“Do it,” Legion says and drinks again.
The boy squirms. Legion holds him tighter. Legion turns his face toward him. The back of Legion’s head faces Milo.
A piercing sharp crack. For a brief instant, I think I accidentally shot myself, or Legion shot the child. But Legion’s head jerks and slumps. His gun arm drops, his hold on the boy releases. I kneel down and gesture to the boy. He gets up and falls into my arms.
Legion slumps to the floor. Blood from his head trickles onto the tiles, much as it trickled onto the ice after I gave him a beating. I look at Milo. He smiles at me and winks, then blows imaginary smoke from the barrel of his Glock.
“Jesus, Milo.” It’s all I can say.
“You’re welcome,” he says.
I still shake, but now from relief. I still feel like I might piss myself. “I guess you had to.”
“Well,” he says, “it’s like this. One of us had to shoot him. First: you weren’t in much of a position to do it. Second: a shot that will paralyze and render a killer incapable of pulling a trigger must be placed at the junction of the brain and the brain stem. A target about the size of an apricot. I didn’t know if you knew that. Third: if you did know it, I didn’t know if you were capable of doing it. So I did it myself.”
I realize the bullet didn’t exit Legion’s head because the crosshatched round split into four chunks and didn’t have much punch left. “Hurry,” I say, “other cops will be here in a second. Swap clips with me and get that dum- dum out of the chamber.”
We make the switch fast. Beagle Boys come through the front door. They run past us to clear rooms and search for victims.
“Congratulations,” I say to Milo. “I guess your hobbies and weapons enthusiasm paid off. You’re the first Finnish cop in modern history to gun down a suspect without being fired upon first.”
“You criticizing me?”
“No. You did the right thing. You enjoyed it though. That, I am criticizing.”
He spins his Glock on his index finger, gunfighter-style, re-holsters it fast. “We’re the only partners in the Finnish police to have both killed perps. We’re going to be famous, like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.”
The Beagle Boys lead teachers and children into the hall and out of the building. They found no murdered children, no casualties at all. Legion just walked around, screamed weird religious gibberish, swilled vodka and shot holes in the walls and ceiling. Commander Beagle asks Milo and me for our accounts. I explain that Milo had no choice, killing Legion was warranted. Commander Beagle shakes our hands, thanks and congratulates us for saving the boy. He doesn’t request Milo’s weapon.
Legion didn’t come here to hurt anyone, probably wouldn’t even have let me shoot myself. He came here to die. Torsten was right. He sought punishment, but for what crimes I can’t imagine.
Milo finds the idea glamorous and I loathe it, but he’s also right. I killed an armed robber in self-defense many years ago. Because I was with Milo today, that old bad business will be resurrected. We’re going to be famous as killer partners, particularly among our colleagues, stuck with the label for the rest of our lives. Worse, because the children in the school lived, we’ll be celebrated in the media. Legion dies. We live. Legion vilified. Milo and me lauded for bravery. Some fucking heroes.
27
Milo and I exit the school together. A large crowd has formed, despite the freezing cold. Police cars and officers ring the building. The press got here fast. Their camera lights and flashes break the darkness. Reporters beg for statements.
I point at a cruiser and turn to Milo. “Fuck this, let’s get out of here.”
We push through the crowd. People shout at us. We hop in the back of the squad car. Two uniforms are in the front keeping warm. They congratulate us. I ask them to take us to the Pasila police station. The car pulls
