“I can’t take these questions.”
“What questions?”
“The never-ending hashing and re-hashing of what happened.”
“So what happened? I have to know what you think or I can’t defend you.”
Korpivaara looked agonized.
“What do I think? I’ve thought and thought about what might’ve happened, and there’s only one possible scenario. I think I went into the apartment, made some coffee, and talked with Laura about sex. Then she must’ve snapped somehow, and I must’ve grabbed a knife and for some odd reason slashed her throat.”
“Do you know it-or just think so?”
“I get a headache from just thinkin’ about it and other things as well. Hell, I do know it. That’s how it went. Get the woman cop in here, and we can be done with this shit. I don’t wanna think about it anymore.”
“Wait a minute,” Lind said. “It’s in your best interest to get to the bottom of this. You might get a lesser sentence if you cooperate. Besides, if that’s how it happened, you’d be charged with manslaughter, not murder.”
“It’s all the same to me.”
“Five years is not the same as fifteen.”
Korpivaara looked solemn and stern, his lips pressed together in a thin line.
“I wanna confess right now. Get the broad in here.”
“But if…”
“Nothing’s gonna change. I’ve thought about this. It needs to be this way; there’s no other option,” Korpivaara said.
Lind was dumbfounded. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this, a man accused of a serious crime confessing as soon as his attorney shows up. The suspect was supposed to tell his version, plead innocent, and be given a chance to build a defense.
“I…”
“Now!” Korpivaara demanded. “I read in a pamphlet that the attorney has to obey the client’s wishes. And I want you to get the cop in here to interrogate me.”
Lind shrugged and knocked on the door. She didn’t get it. Was Korpivaara trying to humiliate her? This wasn’t the best way to do it. After the confession, Lind would walk out of the front door and maybe head to the nearest bar for a cider, but Korpivaara would sit in prison for years.
The guard came quickly.
“Is Joutsamo still here?” Lind asked him.
“She’s having coffee with us.”
“Ask her to come in here.”
Joutsamo showed up a minute later. “Well?” she asked.
“My client wants to be interrogated now.”
“Does he have something new to say?” Joutsamo asked.
“Yes,” Lind replied.
Joutsamo asked Lind and Korpivaara to follow her into the other interrogation room, where the microphones were set up. Joutsamo stated the date, the time of day, and the names of those present into the recorder.
Lind watched the calm officer, who began by saying, “Jorma Korpivaara, you want to tell us something about the death of Laura Vatanen and your involvement in it?”
Korpivaara looked calm.
“Yeah, I killed her. I was at my place and then went to Laura’s apartment that morning and got in with my key. I was there for sex, and we were headed in that direction. I made some coffee and we talked about this and that. Then I suggested sex, and Laura lost it completely. She screamed and called me names and maybe tried to hit me. My mind went blank and I got a knife from the kitchen. Then I slashed her throat and left.”
“Where is the knife now?”
“I can’t remember. I had some sort of a blackout. I must’ve taken it somewhere.”
Joutsamo turned to Lind.
“Does the defense want to ask anything?”
“Why do you want to tell us this now and in this way?’
Korpivaara’s voice was quiet as he said, “I’ve been thinkin’… I can’t take it anymore. I just don’t have it. Can I go back to my cell now?”
“Yes,” Joutsamo said and stopped the recording.
The guard came in and took Korpivaara away.
“That was quick,” Joutsamo said to Lind.
The attorney didn’t reply.
CHAPTER 11
THURSDAY, 4:10 P.M.
HELSINKI POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA
Joutsamo sat at her desk. Kulta and Kohonen were out, as was Suhonen. The four shared an office.
She had headphones on as she typed up interrogations from the last few days.
Joutsamo felt a tap on her shoulder and noticed Takamäki.
“You got time to take a look at this?” the detective asked and handed her a sheet of paper.
Joutsamo took it and read: “Police bulletin. In the late morning on Wednesday, a twenty-six-year-old woman was killed in an apartment located on Nӓyttelijӓ Street in North Haaga, Helsinki. Based on their investigation, the police detained several people. A forty-year-old man was arrested on Thursday as a suspect for manslaughter. He has confessed to the crime. The killing was preceded by an argument. Other suspects have been released.”
“There’s the work of five people for two days, condensed into six sentences,” Joutsamo said with a snicker.
“Sound okay to you?”
“Yup,” Joutsamo said and put the headphones back on. There’d still be a lot to do, but she was glad the case had been solved quickly. She and Takamäki had talked about the charge and, based on Korpivaara’s confession, they decided on voluntary manslaughter. In the current judicial system even the most brutal acts of killing were considered manslaughter as long as they were not premeditated. If the man who executed three people in the McDonald’s drive-through in Porvoo last year was only sentenced for manslaughter, then this was no murder either.
Niskala, Rautalampi, and Lahtela would be free to go by seven o’clock-before the twenty-four hour limit was up-since there were no grounds to arrest them. There was no reason to believe they were involved in the killing-on the contrary.
“I think I’ll go for a run tonight,” Takamäki said.
Joutsamo said she was going to bed early.
* * *
Nea Lind lay on her taupe sofa with her feet on the coffee table. She was comfortable in her gray sweatpants. Her forty-inch flat-screen TV was tuned to CNN news, but she wasn’t paying attention. In her hand she held a tall-stemmed glass filled with wine she had brought back from Rome.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Jorma Korpivaara. It wasn’t the past that bothered her, but the fact that he had picked her as his attorney and then acted the way he did. Of course she’d heard the stories of how oppressive prison walls can be
Nea’s gaze wandered around the living room until her eyes focused on a picture on the light-blue wall. The colors in the picture were calm, maybe even dull. It revealed an organized chaos, just like the apartment, she thought, as her gaze shifted to the plates scattered on the walnut coffee table.
Her packed suitcase still waited in the entry hall. She had taken a taxi from the airport to her office and then gone to the police station before coming home. She had piles of laundry to do.
Lind lived alone. She’d dated and lived with an engineer for a while, but she didn’t like the way he wanted her to act as his doting mother and she left him.
Thinking about Korpivaara, she wondered how his memory could come and go like that. It was possible, she thought, but she couldn’t dismiss the fact that he might have faked the initial memory loss. Something seemed amiss. Didn’t Korpivaara understand that she was on his side, trying to help him?
Lind took a sip of the smooth wine and thought about their meeting in the interrogation room. She was waiting there when Korpivaara was brought in. They greeted each other, and Korpivaara recognized her immediately. Then he said life had treated them differently. It was true.
This was perfectly normal, she thought, but suddenly realized that she had no idea of what normal was for a murder suspect.
When Lind asked Korpivaara why he had picked her, he said his finger simply landed on her name. Was it as simple as that? Perhaps. Lind couldn’t say. She knew he’d been drunk, so it was probably just a quick thought. Picking someone he knew was a safe choice. That’s probably all it was.