The Nightingale Murder (The Maria Kallio Series Book 9)

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “When are you going to run this big sweep of yours?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral, even though it kept slipping toward a snarl.

  “Wouldn’t the vernal equinox be an appropriate time? Good Friday? That would be smooth. So it would be better if you could idle your investigation until then and leave Mishin alone. All the better if we can file murder and attempted murder charges against the lot of them. Or will it be two murders? What’s Sulonen’s prognosis?”

  “We don’t know yet. Are you saying we can go ahead with our murder investigation just so long as we stay silent as a mouse so that your shiny operation doesn’t get messed up? Doesn’t it seem like maybe our priorities are getting a little out of whack? We’re investigating a homicide, in the worst-case scenario as many as three. You haven’t forgotten Oksana Petrenko, have you? Doesn’t that take priority over everything else?”

  “It isn’t quite that simple, Kallio,” Kaartamo replied for Nordström. “I’ve already informed the interior minister of the situation. The most important thing is to stay calm and avoid involving innocent people in the investigation. The mafia wanted this murder to be highly visible, and they probably murdered Lulu in particular to send a message to other independent prostitutes. Mishin is becoming dominant in the metro underworld, and we need to stop that. You do want to be involved in this, don’t you?”

  Kaartamo was talking like George W. Bush trying to convince the rest of the western world to support his bombing campaign in Iraq. I believed him just as little as I believed George double-idiot. Now Nordström stood up and walked over to me. I took a step back.

  “I’m going to do my own work,” I said, “and I’m going to do it as best I know how. I am a team player, but I’m not going to sit this out on the fucking bench. And I don’t like your position here, Nordström.”

  “I assume you remember, Kallio, that your own position is tenuous, given your subordinate’s shaky grasp of the rules of policing,” Kaartamo snapped, and Nordström glanced at him with interest. I could have kicked Kaartamo. Nordström set his hand on my shoulder. It felt heavy.

  “Maria, Kaartamo is right. The people behind this are mafia thugs. The local police can’t handle them. But if we keep each other informed, we’ll get this done.” He emphasized the word “we” as if trying to shut out Kaartamo. I still didn’t know whose team Nordström was really playing on.

  “You can go,” Kaartamo said like a school principal ending a scolding. I was only too happy to comply. After leaving the room, I kicked the elevator door a couple of times, even though it only hurt my own foot. Still, it helped. I walked down the stairs wishing I’d brought my portable CD player to work. A good dose of some loud punk music would have lifted my spirits, but I’d have to wait for that drug until I drove home. I made a quick call to say good night to the kids over the phone. Mom-on-the-phone wasn’t a role I particularly liked.

  The conference room was all in a ruckus. Mira Saastamoinen was explaining something to Puupponen, and Liisa Rasilainen just said a quick hi before making her exit. I poured my thirteenth cup of the day and sat down. My head ached.

  “I have Sulonen’s phone records,” Puustjärvi said from the door. “Someone called him at nine this morning from a pay phone at the train station in Helsinki. Yesterday, after he was released, he called Mauri Hytönen and three of Lulu’s customers, along with Riitta Saarnio—and placed a call to that same pay phone at around three.”

  “That’s an hour before the shooting. OK, let’s get someone to canvass the guards and the ticket workers at the train station. Who are we looking for?”

  “A legal cell phone we could have tracked,” Puustjärvi said. “This person didn’t want us to be able to track his calls.”

  “A pro would have just swapped SIM cards,” Autio said. “Would it be worth dusting the pay phone for prints? Even though it’s been most of a day, we still might find something . . .”

  I understood what Autio meant. We had to cling to every speck of hope. We had to seize every possibility. Criminal investigation was thorough and boring. It was like water slowly wearing away at rock, and when a hole finally formed, even that only grew slowly, never dramatically. “Our friend Hytönen didn’t mention Sulonen’s call,” I pointed out. “What time was it at?”

  “Two fifteen.”

  “So right after we left! And the one to Mrs. Saarnio?”

  “A little before three.”

  “Find out what the calls were about.” I massaged my temples, but it didn’t help. I was headed for a migraine if I didn’t get some fresh air, some painkillers, or both. My purse was in my office, and I had some ketoprofen tablets. Once again, I cursed the windows, which didn’t open, and headed back to the conference room. Puupponen grabbed me by the sleeve, smiling like a kid who wants to make his mom happy.

  “There’s something consistent here,” he said. “Five sightings of a man in a long, black overcoat. On the heavy side. Average or below-average height, wearing a wide-brimmed hat to cover his face and a black scarf pulled over his chin. The girl at the ticket counter at the theater noticed him walking fast past the theater toward the stairs. It’s unlikely that anyone’s making this up since the sightings are all so similar. On the other hand, it could be someone innocent who just attracted attention by dressing oddly.”

  “Did anyone see him with a gun?”

  “No. One of the witnesses said he was holding his hands in his pockets and looking down into the crowd. But the interviews are just getting started. Should I sit these witnesses down with a sketch artist?”

  “Yes. How many witnesses are still in line?”

  “Fifty-two. The fifty-third is so drunk they took him to a cell to wait for his turn in the morning. He was saying something about a crossbow. Sounded a bit far-fetched. But his BAC was through the roof. What happened with Kaartamo?”

  I shrugged. Even though I trusted Koivu and Puupponen, I still wished Taskinen was around. “You clearly need a hug,” Puupponen said suddenly and pulled me into his arms. He was right. I hugged him back until I heard an amused voice.

  “Now I know why you two went to Kuopio together. Did you even go to Vesanto? Are they renting rooms by the hour somewhere up there now?” It was Ursula—her tone was joking.

  I pulled a face at her, and Puupponen said, “How’d you guess? And are you still up for that trip to Mikkeli tomorrow?”

  Ursula laughed, and I managed to join in for a few seconds before my phone rang. It was Antti.

  “Hi. You aren’t home, are you?”

  “No, work. We have a situation.” My phone started buzzing with another call, which I had to answer. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back, dear—” but Antti had already hung up. On the other line came a voice I didn’t recognize.

  “This is Dr. Miasofia Hietamäki from Jorvi Hospital. Am I speaking to the right person? Is this the head of the Espoo Police Violent Crimes Unit?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have a patient here by the name of Tero Sulonen. He’s just come out of surgery.”

  “Did he survive?”

  “Yes, but it’s hard to predict how he’ll do going forward. The damage to his brain was significant. We’re keeping him in a coma for now so he won’t be available for questioning for several days, possibly weeks. We’ll just have to see how quickly he recovers. But you’ll be interested to know we found the projectile he was shot with.”

  “Projectile?”

  “Yes. The object in question is about eight millimeters in diameter, steel and round like a ball. I’ve never seen anything like it, and neither has my colleague who happens to be a sport shooter. According to him it isn’t from any normal firearm.”

  14

  The department ballistics expert, Kaide Söderholm, was already on his way to bed when I called him.

  “Jorvi . . . ? Now . . . ?” Söderholm asked with a yawn, and I thought I heard his jaw pop over the phone. “Is this about the Big Apple case? Have you found the weapon?” />
  “No, but the docs dug the bullet out of the victim. This may be the key to cracking the case. I’ll see you in half an hour at the hospital.”

  My hands trembled, and it wasn’t just from the exhaustion and the coffee. It was the same familiar excitement that always came over me when a case started to resolve itself.

  “Keep things going here. I’m headed to Jorvi. I’ll have to keep my phone off there, but leave me a message if anything significant happens. I’ll come back here after I’m done,” I told Koivu, who had taken his glasses off and was rubbing his temples.

  “A man of average or below-average height?” he said. “What about a woman dressed in men’s clothing? Anna-Maija Mustajoki has pretty broad shoulders.”

  “And large breasts. Those aren’t so easy to hide. We’re looking for a man, Koivu. If you think of the people at the TV studio that night, only one fits the profile: Ilari Länsimies. Mauri Hytönen is in Tarttu, or at least he should be. He hasn’t answered Puustjärvi’s calls.”

  “Oh, we all know where he is,” Puupponen said wryly as he walked by. “There’s a sixth eyewitness report of a man skulking around the third floor. That pretty much clinches it. They all more or less line up. By morning we should have a sketch to circulate.”

  “Good.”

  “Two of the witnesses said that there was something familiar about the person they saw, but they weren’t able to place it. One said that the face seemed like it was out of place.”

  “That could be a lot of help. Anything else?”

  “It is strange that none of the eyewitnesses heard the shot. Even with a silencer there would have been some noise. A couple of witnesses on the lower floor were sure the shot echoed through the whole mall, but people always imagine hearing things after the fact,” Puupponen said and then excused himself to go question his next witness.

  I grabbed a chocolate cookie and then ran down the stairs to the parking garage. I drove up to the outdoor parking lot, got out, and took a few deep breaths of fresh air. My eyelids didn’t want to stay open, but I refused to give in. The clock said 10:00 p.m. I turned on the radio to keep me company. A reporter was talking about the shooting at the Big Apple and asked anyone with information related to the incident to contact the Espoo Police. The department tip line had been jammed all evening. Kaartamo had handled the press release and promised to do the briefing in the morning as well, but he wanted me there too. Maybe it would be good for me to look like I knew I would after a night of barely any sleep. It might give the media the impression that the police were really toiling away on the case.

  After the news, Celine Dion sang the theme from Titanic. I quickly changed the station, but the song reminded me of my grandmother, who had been widowed in the war before her thirtieth birthday. She’d found comfort in the belief that she would see her husband again after this life. I hoped that was true, although I didn’t know if I believed in the afterlife. There were enough unknowns in this life to try to understand. Lately my own beliefs had been on my mind more than usual. I’d written it off as a midlife crisis, a final realization of my own mortality. Because of my profession I couldn’t escape the knowledge of how fragile life is, but so far, I’d succeeded in running away from thinking about whatever came after.

  Leena’s aunt Allu had rejoined the church, and Tero Sulonen believed that after he died he’d go to the same place as Lulu. Was that just an attempt to delude themselves, to postpone the inevitable? Was hope bad if it helped people endure? I remembered a colleague who had killed himself after his lover was murdered. Had he done it to be with her? In that case hope for a reunion was dangerous because it pulled the person away from life.

  It was easier to think about ballistics than metaphysics. I inserted a CD of the Boys and sang along with “Punk Rocker.” As they lamented society overtaking young rebels, I realized how well the words fit my own life. I was a career public servant who rarely picked up her bass guitar, and the closest I ever came to a mosh pit was dancing with my kids in the living room, much to their amazement.

  At the hospital’s front desk I asked for Dr. Miasofia Hietamäki and received directions to her office. Söderholm was already there and looked more like an old rocker in his jeans and battered leather jacket, or maybe a younger version of the author Samuel Beckett, than a top forensics expert. He was inspecting a clean steel ball in a plastic bag. Hietamäki was flipping through a stack of pictures taken of the back of Tero Sulonen’s head.

  “This had to come in at high velocity because it penetrated the skull and the outer layers of the brain,” Hietamäki said.

  “What was the range?” Söderholm asked me. He smelled of cigarettes, and the slender fingers that held the plastic bag bore yellow nicotine stains. The smell was almost welcome in the sterile environment of the hospital.

  “Twenty or thirty meters. We haven’t established the shooter’s exact location yet, but we’re narrowing it down.”

  “OK. Is there a computer here I could use? I have to check my records.”

  “Go right ahead,” Dr. Hietamäki said, gesturing toward her own computer. “Or wait. I can’t let you see these files.” She sat down quickly and clicked several times until only the desktop was visible.

  Söderholm dug in his pocket and found a pack of cigarettes. He opened it and placed one in his mouth. Dr. Hietamäki inhaled sharply and was just about to say something when Söderholm turned in his chair and grinned.

  “I’m not going to light it. I just think better this way. I’m a true addict. Even hypnosis didn’t work on me. Or I just didn’t want it to work.”

  Turning back, he opened a web browser and began typing and humming to himself.

  “You said on the phone that Sulonen will probably live but you couldn’t predict anything beyond that. What did you mean?” I asked. Sulonen had only been free for one day, and Koivu was currently trying to track his movements.

  “The projectile likely damaged the speech centers of his brain. We’ll just have to monitor the situation. We’re keeping him in an artificial coma for at least three days to give his brain a chance to heal. It’s very likely that after he wakes up he’ll suffer from at least partial memory loss.”

  Dr. Hietamäki perched on the edge of her desk, her back to Söderholm.

  “Unfortunately, my colleague who shoots recreationally is in another surgery. I’m also on call, so I may have to leave at any moment. We’ve tried to locate Sulonen’s next of kin, but we can’t find anyone. He lived with a woman, but she hasn’t replied either.”

  “Sulonen lived with Lulu Mäkinen, also known as Lulu Nightingale. She’s dead.”

  Hietamäki frowned. “Yes! Why didn’t I make the connection before? I was just thinking about saving my patient. Do you think he’s a security risk?”

  I’d wondered the same thing. For Sulonen’s sake, it would be best to spread the word that he was barely alive and wouldn’t regain consciousness for a long time. On the other hand, we had to keep patient information confidential, and there didn’t seem to be anyone to ask for permission to release it.

  “I’d recommend a guard,” I said, remembering Oksana. She’d disappeared from this same hospital in broad daylight. If professional criminals were behind this case, they could do the same thing to Sulonen. “I’ll just go ahead and arrange it.”

  “Bingo!” Söderholm suddenly said. “I was right. I thought this might be it. Come have a look, ladies. Here’s your weapon, and it’s a dandy.” Söderholm moved away from the screen and pointed to the image as proudly as if it were his firstborn.

  At first, I didn’t register what I saw. The picture showed a sort of slingshot with a solid, ergonomically molded handle that went on the hand like a glove. A heavy-duty elastic band was connected to the handle, just like the slingshots I used to shoot rose hips at my sisters when I was a kid.

  “It looks like a slingshot,” Hietamäki said.

  “Exactly. It is a slingshot, but it’s no ordinary slingshot. This is an Italian hunti
ng slingshot. I tried one once. In Finland they’re illegal, but there are EU countries where they haven’t been able to outlaw them yet. They’re used for hunting birds, since they don’t cause as much destruction as a shotgun and there’s no sound to scare off the birds. That ball is just the right size.”

  “But can a slingshot nearly kill a grown man?” I asked incredulously.

  “The range was just about right. A slingshot is easy to hide in a jacket pocket, and it’s hard to notice: no gunpowder smell, no bang. The shooter had to have it visible when he was aiming, but he could have it hidden again before the ball even connected with the target.” Söderholm’s eyes shone with excitement. “Maria, promise me that when you catch this guy, you’ll let me question him. I want to know where he got this and how he came up with the idea to use it. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” The cigarette hung from the corner of Söderholm’s mouth like he was a French film star. I was afraid he might bite it in half in his excitement. “I’ll take the ball to the evidence locker. I’ll have to do some more investigation to confirm everything, but I’m relatively certain this was a slingshot. That’s unfortunate in the sense that it wouldn’t be in any database, but illegal firearms aren’t either.”

  “Do you think the selection of weapon points to a professional criminal? Do you know if slingshots are legal in Russia?”

  “I’ll check. I think this points to someone with a sense of humor. Like I said, send him over to me when you nail him. Is it OK if I get my report to you tomorrow? Our youngest has had an ear infection for almost a week, and I haven’t slept much because my wife’s on the night shift. She’s home tonight, though.” Söderholm looked at Dr. Hietamäki and asked, “Do you also do cancer operations?”

  “Brain cancer, yes.”

  “Too bad. You could have shown me some scary lung cancer pictures. Maybe that would help me kick the habit. I’ve gotta go light up now. See you ladies later!”