The investigation was multidimensional; the body that disappeared in Turku was found in the city of Vantaa by the Helsinki Police. With Turku being a hundred miles west of Helsinki, and Vantaa twelve miles northeast, the three cities formed a slanted triangle. The case appeared complicated, so the NBI was also interested. And the distance from the crime scene to NBI headquarters was less than five miles.
Technically, the Turku PD was in charge, since the missing persons report was filed there. The officers agreed that Takamäki would chair the meeting, and they would later decide who would head the investigation.
“Forensics is on the scene,” Takamäki began. “We have units from Helsinki, Eastern Uusimaa, and the NBI, and a physician from the Medical Examiner’s Office. We don’t have a lot of information yet, which is understandable since the body was found only three hours ago. At this point we don’t even have an educated guess as to whether Maiju Rahkola was killed in the woods or if her body was hidden there afterward. The cause of death is also unknown… And yes, we strongly suspect that the body is Maiju Rahkola’s, but we don’t know for sure.”
“What do we know about the disappearance?” Takamäki asked, looking at the guys from Turku.
“We don’t know much,” Mӓkelӓ said apologetically. “On June 17 she went bar-hopping in downtown Turku with a couple of her friends. She was only seventeen, but she looked older and had no problem getting in, which is usually the case with attractive girls. Her friends saw her last in Restaurant Galax sometime after midnight. That’s the last sign of her.”
“No phone calls or anything?” asked Nykänen from the NBI.
“No. We heard about the disappearance two days later when her parents got worried. At first it wasn’t considered a homicide, but a typical runaway teenager. She was expected to return in the next few days. We got her cell phone info, but her phone was turned off somewhere downtown about the time of the disappearance. After she’d been missing for two weeks, we published that photo,” Mӓkelӓ said, pointing to the picture on the board. “We checked the security videos downtown and stopped by a few known drug nests, but she had disappeared into thin air.”
Joutsamo’s cell phone beeped and she checked the text: “Korpivaara is not the killer. Positively. –Lind.”
Yeah, sure, Joutsamo thought and didn’t reply.
Mӓkelӓ from Turku pulled a file out of his bulging briefcase and set it on the table. The name Rahkola was written on it in red marker.
“This is all the material we’ve accumulated in the case. It was put on the back burner that summer because of a couple other cases, but we’ve revisited it a few times with no progress.”
So, basically, insubstantial investigating, Joutsamo thought. They weren’t taking the disappearance seriously. No body, no homicide.
“Actually, we thought the girl had drowned in the river and her body would show up at some point,” Mӓkelӓ continued. “The problem is that the Aura River runs into the Gulf of Finland and the body could end up there.”
“Yeah sure,” Nykänen said. “The Vantaa River is only a mile from where the body was found, so it could’ve gotten there by first floating in the Gulf of Finland, and then up the Vantaa River…”
Kulta scoffed at the comment but didn’t say anything. When the big guns talk, lowly detectives should keep quiet.
“That’s not good,” Takamäki said. “Let’s try to keep the jokes funny at least… So, we don’t have much information on the disappearance. We’ll have to revisit that. What about the discovery of the body?”
“Yeah. I went into the woods based on the tip and found the body after a bit of shoveling,” Suhonen said.
“Can you be more specific?” Takamäki asked.
“Sure. An ex-inmate I know had a heart attack, and I went to visit him in the hospital. He told me his former cell mate had told him about a dead body hidden in the woods. According to him, the cell mate had heard it from someone else.”
“Give us names—otherwise we can’t keep up,” Nykänen inserted.
“I won’t disclose the name of my informant, but Takamäki knows it. My buddy had heard the story from Lauri Korhonen who got run over by a train a couple of weeks ago.”
“That’s a familiar name,” Nykänen said. “Korhonen ran some meth deals in Espoo in his day.”
“Yeah, but he’s dead now,” Suhonen said. “I checked his record. So Korhonen wasn’t the killer; it was his cell mate. My informant only knew his nickname, Nortti. And he couldn’t remember exactly when they were in prison together.”
“Nortti,” Nykänen said, mulling over the name. “Now we just need to know if it was red or green,” he joked, referring to the cigarette brands that had been one of Finland’s most popular for many decades. “I know a few guys by that nickname, but I don’t think any of them served time in the last year. Korhonen had to have heard about it after June 2010.”
Mӓkelӓ spoke up. “Are you sure your informant hasn’t made up the prison story to get you off his scent?”
“I’m sure,” Suhonen said. “If he had killed her, he would’ve said so. And if he wanted to conceal it, he wouldn’t have told me anything about it in the first place.”
“That makes sense,” Mӓkelӓ said. “But it shouldn’t be hard to find out. Let’s go over the list of guys who served a sentence with Lauri Korhonen.”
“I’ve got that list,” Joutsamo said and showed him the document. “Korhonen was in Helsinki prison from September to December 2010 and another stretch from February to March this year. The prison gave me his cell mates’ names.”
Joutsamo passed out copies. The list had more than ten names: Malmberg, Pesonen, Mölsӓ, Saarinen, Aarnio, Kinnunen, Lyytinen, Sandström, Pentikӓinen, Cuchna, Leikas, Talja, and Holopainen.
While the others were looking at the list, Joutsamo continued, “I checked everyone’s information and nobody listed had the nickname Nortti. Not even close. There was Tanka, Mocha, Rask, Mics, Ronda, and Hole…but none that would remotely sound like Nortti, a smoke, or even North.”
“What if it wasn’t a cell mate, but just someone in the same unit?” Nykänen suggested.
“We’ll check that next.”
“We had an Aarnio in the Korpivaara case,” Kulta said, looking at the list. “But it may not be the same man.”
“No, ours was Mikael,” Joutsamo said, shaking her head. “The cell mate is Kimmo Aarnio. Mikael didn’t have a criminal record. Same last name, different guy.”
“Did you search the database by nickname?” Nykänen asked.
Joutsamo handed out another list.
“We got 213 hits. The records show about two hundred criminals by the nickname of Nortti.”
“Anybody from the Turku area?” asked Vuori from Mӓkelӓ’s team, speaking for the first time.
“Frankly, I haven’t had a chance to look.”
“I understand,” Vuori said with a nod and took the list.
* * *
Nea Lind sat in a Mercedes taxi that was going north from Hakamӓki Street onto the Hämeenlinna Freeway and speeding up.
Lind was confused. Korpivaara had told her straight out that he didn’t kill Laura Vatanen, but he was willing to serve the sentence. Why? Who was he trying to protect? She needed to know. Her first instinct was to go to the office and write up a report, but this wasn’t about taxes. It was a criminal case that she had to investigate and not just interpret.
Maybe Sini Rentola-Lammi could give her some answers. The girl probably knew more about Korpivaara than she had told Lind the night before. Lind tried calling her, but it went straight to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.
The taxi took the Aseseppӓ Street exit and drove around Haaga for five minutes before stopping in front of a red-brick apartment building.
“Which door?” the young driver asked.
“Here’s fine,” Lind said and waited for the receipt.
The sun was shining on Lind’s back. The bright weather, albeit below freezing, felt good
after the snowfall. She had replaced the shoes she bought in Rome with a pair of winter sneakers to keep her toes warm. Lind felt energetic, though she sensed a headache was lurking. It was probably because she hadn’t eaten or slept well. Walking to stairwell E, she decided she’d try to fit in a meal at some point.
A few cars were parked in the building’s lot, and behind it a young mother was raking a sandbox. A child was standing next to the sandbox, holding a shovel and a bucket. Lind guessed the mother was checking the sand for needles that might’ve been dropped there the night before.
Lind pressed the button by the door and walked in as the lock buzzed. She climbed the stairs and rang the doorbell to Rentola-Lammi’s apartment.
The door opened quickly. The safety chain was not on, and a forty-year-old, stern-faced woman stood at the door. She was somewhat overweight, and it showed in her worn face. Her brown hair reached her shoulders, and she was wearing black sweatpants and a gray T-shirt.
“You from Social Services?” the woman asked tersely.
“No, I’m attorney Nea Lind.”
“Whose attorney?
“Jorma Korpivaara, the building custodian, who is accused of killing the woman in the building next door last week.”
“Oh,” the woman said, sounding curious. “What do you want?”
“Is Sini at home?”
“I haven’t seen her. She went somewhere this morning. I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. What does Sini…?”
Lind shook her head. “I just wanted to check a few things about Korpivaara’s whereabouts on Wednesday.”
“I see,” the woman said.
The mother must have known that the daughter had connections to the murder suspect; otherwise she would’ve been more concerned.
“What do you know about Korpivaara?”
“The custodian?”
“Yes,” Lind said, expectantly.
“I don’t know,” the woman began, shifting her weight. “He’s not really my type. He seemed okay. We’d chat sometimes, and he always did his job just fine. He always plowed a path to the bus stop so we haven’t had to trudge in the snow. So he’s an okay guy.”
“Good,” Lind said. She doubted the woman knew about the relationship her daughter had with Korpivaara.
“Any sign of him last Wednesday?”
“Is this some sort of a police interrogation?”
Lind guessed the woman had done a few of those.
“No, as I said, I’m Korpivaara’s attorney. I’m trying to find out what happened on Wednesday.”
“Isn’t that a job for the police?”
“It usually is, but sometimes defense attorneys need to do it too, especially if the police aren’t doing a good job.”
“I can’t remember exactly. The bus runs at 8:03. He might’ve been out there with his leaf blower on one of the mornings, but I couldn’t tell you what day.”
“Did you know the victim, Laura Vatanen?” Lind asked, deciding to go on with the questioning.
“Was she the retarded girl from stairwell C?”
Lind nodded, despite resenting the politically incorrect term. Although, politically incorrect was what you got in this neighborhood.
“I didn’t exactly know her. We don’t have a rumor mill around here. Sini would go over there sometimes, but I didn’t like it. I guess this Laura—that’s her name, right? I guess she hung out in the Alamo Bar, where the custodian and his buddies often went too.”
“Sini, too?”
“She wanted to,” the woman said, laughing. “But I went in there and told the bartender in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t be serving anything to my underage daughter, and I gave him Sini’s picture. I said I’d report them if they did.”
“Did it work?”
“Whaddya think?” the woman said. “They didn’t sell her anything at the Alamo. But would I ask if you were from Social Services if things were okay?”
“How bad is it?”
Rentola-Lammi pursed her lips and said, “Bad enough that I wasn’t surprised to see a lady like you in a nice jacket show up at my door on a Sunday afternoon.”
“Yeah. Ask Sini to call me when she comes home,” Lind said and threw in a thank-you before the door closed.
Lind thought she’d make her rounds in the apartment buildings and ask some questions. Most people would be home on a Sunday.
CHAPTER 26
SUNDAY, 2:30 P.M.
LIISA STREET, HELSINKI
Römpötti lounged on her sofa in sweatpants. She had recorded several weeks’ episodes of Desperate Housewives and planned to watch them all in one sitting on a Sunday. After two episodes, her thoughts went back to the Korpivaara case. She thought about going for a run, but laziness took over. Römpötti went into her kitchen and poured herself a glass of red wine. The ceilings were high in her art nouveau-style, one-bedroom apartment in Kruununhaka, a neighborhood on the Gulf of Finland.
She hoped the wine would clear her thoughts so she could grasp the string that would unravel the case into a TV news story. Römpötti had a hunch it would be fantastic. To be able to prove that a suspect whom the police deemed guilty was indeed innocent would make top headlines across the country. She could add the grim human interest story of the past that the suspect and his attorney shared. New angles would come up as it took off.
But Römpötti had a problem: Korpivaara was likely guilty and she needed the innocence factor to keep the case intriguing.
The red wine from Chile was a balanced blend of ripe fruit, full-bodied and mellow. Römpötti couldn’t have characterized it in that much detail; she read the description in the store pamphlet. The wine was just fine for a ten-euro bottle.
She rubbed her shins under the pants legs and thought she ought to shave.
Damn, she cursed to herself. Her thoughts kept escaping to the mundane. She needed to work and not just dream of all the answers falling into her lap. Something like that only happened on extremely rare occasions. She had to work like hell to get results: meet with people, make phone calls, and peruse documents. Only about one out of ten potential ideas turned into TV-newsworthy coverage.
Römpötti emptied her glass and went for her cell phone. She found the number for Mustikkamӓki, the cameraman. If he was free to go on a shoot, she’d go. She should probably call Lind and apologize for her blow-up from yesterday.
* * *
Lind saw the padlock the police had installed on Laura Vatanen’s door, and to her disappointment the place still had police tape around it. There was no way to get in—unless she broke in, which wasn’t a good idea. The police had more investigating to do—on the coffeemaker plug, for example.
Lind rang the doorbell of the apartment across the hall. The name on the door was Ridanpӓӓ.
“Coming,” a woman screeched from the apartment.
The attorney waited for the door to open. She could instantly tell from the woman’s face and the smell of red wine that she was an alcoholic.
“Hello,” Lind said and stated her business.
“Oh,” the woman said. “The police were already here and asked questions.”
“Of course. But I’m doing my own investigation.”
“I’m sure you are, just like Perry Mason. Listen, girl, I’ll talk to you if you go get a bottle of wine for me from the liquor store.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’s not far and a lady like you probably owns a car,” the woman said.
“I don’t have a car, but besides that today is Sunday and the store is closed.”
“Oh damn,” the woman said. “I’ve always been one for a liberal policy on alcohol sales. I’m glad they started selling beer in the convenience stores, but they should get wine in, too. That would be democratic. My stomach can’t stand beer; I’ve got a gluten allergy.”
Lind wasn’t convinced about the alcohol sales policy, but agreed with the woman in order to keep the conversation going.
“Wine would be
okay,” she said, “but I wouldn’t want hard liquor in there.”
“Hard liquor is for troublemakers, the kind that Laura had for visitors.”
Lind was glad the old boozer had brought up Laura’s apartment.
“Who used to go in there?”
“Well, the custodian and his buddies were constantly over there. Hooligans, I say.”
This was no news.
“Did anyone else visit her?”
“Some girl, occasionally,” Ridanpӓӓ said.
“How do you know, by the way?” Lind asked.
“Sometimes I’d look through there,” the old woman said, pointing to the peephole on the door. “That was better than the reality shows on TV.”
Lind noticed a barstool by the door.
“What did you see?”
“Arguments, mostly. Those are the most interesting anyway. Laura had a pretty bad temper. Sometimes she was kind of weird, on account of her disability, but she was always nice to me. She’d go get me wine… Could you go get me some now?”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Oh yeah, you told me that already. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Lind said. “I can go tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You said something about arguments,” Lind said, to bring the conversation back on topic. “Did you see fights or anything like that?”
“No. The men were scared of her. She had a mouth like no other, and she didn’t think before she opened it.”
Lind noticed that the woman had to lean on the doorframe to steady her balance.
“Was anyone else there besides the custodian and his buddies?”
“Shh, be quiet,” the woman said, pursing her lips. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“About what?”
“I can’t say. I promised.”
“Promised whom?”
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore,” the intoxicated woman said.
“That’s not a problem, though. See, I’m a lawyer and I have to heed the attorney-client confidentiality privilege,” Lind said. “You can tell me.”
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