“Did someone say the holy word?”
Suhonen moved aside to make room for Takamäki’s old friend, who soon filled the entire doorway.
“Tsk, tsk. Thou shalt not take your lord’s name in vain,” Kannas growled as he came into the room, a small briefcase tucked under his arm.
“Oh, really. A lord?” said Suhonen.
“Inspector Suhonen decided to show up for once, eh? And here I figured your type would just be stumbling out of the sack so you could go bar hopping and raiding whorehouses till dawn,” said Kannas with a wink.
Suhonen had a comeback at the ready, but Kannas never gave him the chance. “Just so there aren’t any misunderstandings, though, I should say I’m no god. Forensics is god. Everybody believes in it. Me, I’m just a humble servant of that god. A slave, I should say.”
“A lowly worm of the earth,” Suhonen went on. Takamäki smiled.
“Naah. No worms yet,” said Kannas in a more serious tone, “the body was still warm. Worms and other critters need a bit more time. That’s how it usually is, depending on the temperature, of course…”
“We get the picture,” Takamäki cut in. “What did you find?”
Kannas dug a stack of photographic printouts from his briefcase and handed them to Takamäki. “Here’s a little taste of blood for the paper-pushing lieutenant.”
As he reached for the printouts, Takamäki shot a hard enough look at Kannas that he thought better of his comment. “Sorry, long day. Plus it’s my day off. But a corpse beats the mother-in-law’s birthday party any time, no matter what the wife might think of it.”
“A milestone?”
“Luckily not.”
Takamäki looked over the photos. Tomi Salmela’s body lay on its back on a rag rug. The floor looked like grey linoleum. There wasn’t much blood, which was typical, since sudden death stopped the heart’s pumping immediately.
“The body’s at the coroner’s now, but based on experience and the diameter of the entry hole in his forehead I’d say it’s a nine-millimeter round. Not to mention the bullet tore off half his head when it came out the back. We dug the slug out of the far wall of the entry. Still at the lab, so nothing more on that
for now.”
Takamäki nodded. They had found a nine-millimeter pistol on Nyberg when he was arrested.
“We found the casing too,” said Kannas. “There among the shoes. Based on the location of the casing and the blood splatters, I’d guess he was shot right at the door or just inside. The door was intact, so the victim had apparently opened it himself. We got plenty of fingerprints, which we’re sifting through right now. That doesn’t cost much, but what about running some DNA? We found all kinds of cigarette butts, bloody kleenexes and a bunch of other junk that might tell us who’s been there.”
Takamäki thought for a moment. “I don’t think it’s necessary, at least not yet. Since the shooter is already in custody and apparently never entered the apartment I think we can save the NBI some time and money. But obviously we should archive the evidence in case we run into any surprises.”
Kannas approved. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Anything else of interest?”
“Not really. Just your typical drug hole: a bunch of stolen junk. We’ll see if we can find the original owners if we get around to it… Oh yeah, I almost forgot.” Kannas’ lie was deliberately transparent. “The hiding spot was pretty unoriginal, but I suppose they figured the dogs wouldn’t find the drugs in the toilet tank. And they never do either, which is why we always look there. Found half a pound of coke.”
“Half a pound,” said Suhonen.
“We don’t have an official weight yet, so it might be a bit more or less.”
The drugs got Suhonen thinking. Half a pound of cocaine was nothing to sneeze at. Maybe this Tomi Salmela wasn’t such a small-time dealer after all. That much coke was enough of a motive to get him shot, but if that were the case, the killer certainly wouldn’t have left the drugs in the apartment.
MONDAY,
SEPTEMBER 18
CHAPTER 4
MONDAY, 7:45 A.M.
MARI LEHTONEN’S APARTMENT, ALPPILA, EAST HELSINKI
“Laura, put your coat on! It’s cold out there,” shouted Mari Lehtonen from the kitchen as her daughter tied her shoes. Twelve-year-old Laura had on jeans and a college sweatshirt. Summer had turned to autumn just the previous night. The thermometer in the kitchen window of their two-bedroom flat read forty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Gray clouds skirted swiftly over the gray apartment building opposite theirs.
“Yup,” said the blond-haired girl as she grabbed her backpack off the floor. “Bye.”
Before Mari Lehtonen could make it to the entryway to check, the girl was out the door. Her parka was still hanging from the hook next to the door.
“Figures,” she laughed. Laura was a quiet and kind girl. Perhaps this was just how her teen rebellion would manifest itself.
Mari went back to the kitchen and sat down at a smallish dining table where the morning paper was spread out. Dark hair fell across her narrow face and reached her thin shoulders. She took a gulp of coffee from a mug that read “Mom’s Joe,” followed by a smiley face. Laura had painted the mug herself and given it as a gift the previous Christmas.
Mari and Laura shared an apartment on Porvoo Street. The interior was neat and clean, with a feminine décor. When Laura was six, Mari had divorced her husband for the usual reasons: alcoholism and the threat of violence. Anton had actually never hit them, but she had always suspected that it was just a matter of time. Life was unpleasant then and Mari had taken the necessary action.
Fear of violence had made her think about what she’d do when the first blow came. She loathed the thought of resorting to a kitchen knife. Best to throw the drunk out before it was too late. The divorce hadn’t been easy, but a couple prior house calls to the police were enough to convince the judge to grant Mari sole custody. This had aggravated the situation to the point of threats and harassment. Finally, she had had enough and sought a restraining order on him, and he had relented. As far as Mari knew, Anton Teittinen had no idea where his ex-wife and daughter were now living.
Mari picked up the front page of the Helsingin Sanomat with an article about a company that was starting labor negotiations to eliminate 170 positions. She read only the headline and a couple of the first paragraphs. The article was written solely from the perspective of the firm, with employee comments made to sound like a lot of rabble-rousing. Mari knew what it was like to be fired. After earning an associate’s degree in business, she had landed a job at the Jyväskylä Savings and Loan; but during the banking crisis of the ’90s, she had been laid off and moved to Helsinki. Now she was thirty-seven and working in the finance department of a mid-sized office supply retailer. The job was alright and the pay adequate for rent and hobbies.
Perhaps Alppila was not the best neighborhood for a girl on the cusp of puberty, but at least life here was better than their previous situation. Once a vast cow pasture, Alppila was now largely an industrial district filled with working class apartments. It drew its name from the rugged bedrock prevalent in the area-a cheeky comparison to the Alps. They liked the area, as the school was nearby and there was plenty to do. Laura attended theater classes twice a week. Mari also liked the location because her office in Vallila was only a few hundred yards away. The cultural delights of Helsinki were almost as close.
Mari took a bite of a ham-on-rye sandwich with a single leaf of lettuce. She paged through the paper and made it to the Metro section before her phone rang. The number belonged to her boss, Essi Saari. “Hi,” said Mari into the receiver.
“Where are you?” asked Saari, in a voice half anxious, half angry.
“Still at home.”
“You forget?”
Shit, she thought, remembering the meeting invitation she’d received the previous afternoon. One of the higher-ups had been demanding some report and Saari had asked Mari to help. Saari
wasn’t much for computers, so Mari was supposed to have run the report.
“Yeah…” said Mari as she walked back into the kitchen. “I’m sorry.”
“Well…it’s alright. We still have time. Have your coffee, but let’s get started as soon as you get here.”
“Gimme fifteen minutes,” she said, knowing full well it would take her longer with dressing and makeup.
With no time to sit, Mari raised her mug to her lips. That’s when she noticed a small article: “Young Man Gunned Down in Alppila.” Police were asking for information from potential eyewitnesses about a youth who’d been killed on Porvoo Street. Mari checked the address to be sure she hadn’t read it wrong. She hadn’t. It was the building just across from them.
Her thoughts stopped and a stream of images flickered through her memory. She shook her head faintly, tore out the article and hurried into the bathroom.
* * *
“What exactly did you see?” asked Essi Saari. The finance director was sitting at her computer in her sleek modern office, dressed in a white-and considering her weight-excessively tight pantsuit. Mari had shown her boss the newspaper clipping and mentioned to her that she had seen something.
“I saw a dark car and a man. It’s like the picture is engrained in my head. License plate and all.”
“I know you’ve got a good head for numbers, but…”
“But the police are asking for eyewitnesses.”
“Come on. It’s not like you saw the murder.”
“But they’re asking for information on the car. Shouldn’t I…”
This time it was Saari’s turn to interrupt. “Not a chance. No point getting mixed up in these kinds of things. The cops have their DNAs and phone taps. That’s how you solve murders. There’s really no point in getting involved. You’ve already had enough
problems, given your ex and all. You’d wind up testifying in court, you know.”
“But shouldn’t I at least…”
“No,” said Saari. “Should we get that report done now? Getting to be crunch time here.”
“Alright, let me see it. You just tell me what you want me to run.”
* * *
Half a dozen officers had already sampled the coffee Joutsamo had made. As usual, she’d made tea for herself. Suhonen yawned while Kulta sipped his coffee.
The meeting was supposed to have started at nine o’clock sharp, but Takamäki was late.
“So did you get drafted to play in the Elite League yet?” Joutsamo asked Suhonen, as he smothered a seemingly endless yawn.
Suhonen smirked. He regretted telling his colleagues that he had begun playing hockey again.
“Yup, by the Blues after their flop last season,” Suhonen laughed.
“You played quite a bit when you were younger, didn’t you?” asked Kulta.
“In Lahti till I was sixteen.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“Uhh,” Suhonen stretched and took a sip of coffee. “If I said I just got more interested in other things, I’d be lying. Truth is, I just wasn’t good enough,” Suhonen lied.
“So why are you back on the ice now?” said Joutsamo, genuinely interested.
Suhonen smiled. “I already bought the Harley. Can’t change the wife, since I don’t have one, and I can’t complain much about my job, but I gotta do something about this imminent midlife crisis, right? I guess senior hockey is macho enough for me.”
Joutsamo laughed. With the killer behind bars and the case all but closed, the mood was light. Locating the driver would only be a bonus, though a big one, of course. But that didn’t put on much additional pressure. Risto Korpi, on the other hand, was a stressful target, one that they knew would take a lot of work and time to connect to the shooting. None of Korpi’s goons would squeak, so the case would come down to phone taps or some other technological means. Provided Korpi was found, his apartment could be wired. Then it was just a matter of time before his tongue slipped. Incriminating evidence might surface by accident as well. Something significant could come up in a Narcotics operation.
“Good morning and my apologies,” said Takamäki, who had swapped yesterday’s sweater for a collared shirt and blazer. He had stashed his lightweight overcoat in his office.
A murmur of good mornings went around the room.
“Have we gotten the autopsy report from the coroner yet?”
“No,” said Joutsamo. “But I doubt there’s anything of interest there. No mystery on the cause of death.”
“I’m mainly interested in the victim’s blood alcohol level and any traces of drugs,” said Takamäki. Since not everyone had been updated yet, he recapped last night’s forensics briefing from Kannas. Takamäki had stayed on until eleven o’clock, when the officers who had gone to canvas
the neighboring buildings returned. Nothing new there. No eyewitnesses.
“If there was coke in Salmela’s system, I bet the stash in the toilet was his,” said Kulta. “Though that’s probably the case anyway.”
“I saw a little blurb in the Helsingin Sanomat; what about the other rags?” asked Takamäki.
“Two columns each for Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti. No photos,” said Joutsamo. “They probably couldn’t make it out to the crime scene before deadline.”
Takamäki gave a snort. “Doubt that has anything to do with it. The top photographer from Ilta-Sanomat must be out of town. The guy gravitates to corpses like a vulture. Have we gotten any calls to the hotlines?”
“A couple callers said they saw a car but couldn’t recall the make, driver or plate. One of them thought it might have started with an X or a K,” said Joutsamo.
“So nothing, then. What about the phone taps?”
Joutsamo went on, “We stayed until midnight. Figured the numbers were probably old. Voice-activated recorder didn’t pick anything up overnight.”
“So,” Takamäki sighed. “Same cards as yesterday. And nothing new on Korpi either?”
“No,” said Suhonen. “Got all the traps and trawlers in the water, but no hits yet.”
“Alright. Doesn’t look so good right now, but we have time. Let’s focus on Korpi. Find out everything you can from the databases, and let’s get a warrant to review any cell tower records in the area of the murder. Maybe the driver had a cell phone. If we find one, we can trace it right to the guy’s hand. I want footage from any surveillance cameras in the area in case the car shows up in one of them. And let’s contact the neighboring precincts, the NBI and any informants out there to see if we can dig something up. Anything else?”
Nobody said anything.
“Let’s get to work, then. Plenty of footwork to
do here.”
* * *
Mari Lehtonen’s hand was resting on the telephone, and had been for some time now. The newspaper clipping lay in front of her on the desk of her cubicle. The clock in the lower corner of her computer screen read 10:56 A.M.
Lehtonen had finished the computer reports in about an hour, and devoted half an hour to email triage afterwards. One was from Laura’s theater instructor, who considered the girl a promising young actress and was asking for Mari’s permission for Laura to take on a larger role in the upcoming fall production. Mari couldn’t help but smile at her rather extravagant use of the word “production,” but she felt warmed by the message. Mari consented on the condition that Laura’s studies would not suffer. Rehearsals would consume three evenings a week, and opening night was in December.
Her mood, however, was unsettled. The image of a dark Mazda with its driver and license plate flitted continually through her mind. If only she could simply upload the image from her brain to a computer and send it to the authorities in an anonymous email.
She had to report it to the police, she thought. Maybe they wouldn’t find her information useful, but it said right there in the paper that it was needed. She shuddered at the thought of someone being murdered in the neighboring building. The killers should be held responsible. No point getting
mixed up in these kinds of things, Essi Saari had said. But her boss was wrong. If Mari didn’t act, the criminals would win.
Mari picked up the phone and punched in the number listed in the newspaper.
* * *
The hotline phone was closest to Joutsamo’s workstation in the office she shared with Kohonen, Kulta and a couple of other officers. Suhonen also had a desk, a chair and a telephone, but had the janitors not visited daily, spiders would have surely overrun it with their webs. The topmost item on Suhonen’s desk was a year-old newspaper.
Joutsamo rolled her desk chair over to the phone and was just lifting the receiver when Kulta blurted, “Betcha three shifts of coffee-duty it’s some wacko.”
Joutsamo accepted and grinned as she flicked on the voice recorder.
“Helsinki Violent Crimes Unit, Anna Joutsamo speaking.”
“Hello,” said a hesitant female voice. “I’m calling about the incident on Porvoo Street. Is this the right number?”
“Yes, it is,” said Joutsamo in a cordial voice. “Do you have any information on it?”
“Yeah. Not sure if it’s important, but I was coming out of the convenience store and saw a Mazda parked there.”
Joutsamo snatched a pen. The woman had the make of the car right despite its lack of mention in
the press. The sergeant scribbled out, knew Mazda. “You’re sure it was a Mazda?”
“Yes. A blue 323, as I remember. Not too old. The sort of rounder-looking sedan style. Wasn’t it then?”
“Uuh,” Joutsamo stalled intentionally. “Maybe I should get your name.”
Witnesses often wished to remain anonymous. Joutsamo was confident the woman would reveal her name since her number was clearly visible on the caller ID. She had already written it down.
“Mari Lehtonen.”
“What did you see there, Mari?”
“The car, driver and license plate. Nothing more.”
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