“That was my thought, too, but Vatanen’s blood type wasn’t on it,” Kulta said.
“Did they find anything in the plastic bag that was discovered in the woods?”
Kulta shook his head. “Nope. Nothing from the bloody paper towels found in the trash bin, either.”
“Okay,” Joutsamo said, turning back to her salad.
“Do you want me to ask them for more tests?”
“No hurry,” Joutsamo said. “It might well be that the plastic bag has nothing to do with the case anyway.”
“Yeah, it might’ve been left in the bushes by some junkies or drunks.”
“Based on all evidence, we have the killer here, and there’s no rush. The DNA tests won’t come back till next week anyway.”
CHAPTER 15
FRIDAY, 4:30 P.M.
NORTH HAAGA, HELSINKI
Lind didn’t own a car so she took a taxi from the courthouse to her office and dropped off the documents from her real estate dispute case. She could bill the client for that leg of the trip, but from there she walked to the National Museum stop to catch a bus going to North Haaga.
It was snowing and the bus ride was slow in the slushy rush-hour traffic. Humidity fogged up the bus windows. Lind’s thoughts kept going back to the interview with Römpötti. She wondered if she’d gone too far in questioning the validity of Korpivaara’s confession-which she had heard with her own ears. But it was done now. If it had been a newspaper interview, she could’ve asked the reporter to email her a draft of the story, but TV didn’t work that way.
The second question she had written on her list the night before was: “Can an innocent suspect make a false confession?” She wasn’t interested in mentally-disturbed professional confessors, but regular suspects who confess to crimes they haven’t committed.
Lind had read about a case from 1989. A twenty-eight-year-old woman jogging in New York’s Central Park was raped and left for dead in a ditch. She survived, but wasn’t able to identify the attacker. The police arrested five teenage boys who were found loitering nearby, and they confessed to the act on video. Later in court the boys denied everything. Despite the lack of forensic evidence, the court sentenced the boys to prison for five to twelve years. The victim was Caucasian and the convicted boys were blacks and Latinos.
In 2002 the police discovered that the real attacker was a convicted murderer and a four-time rapist. A DNA sample that had been found at the crime scene-and marked as unidentified at the time of the original investigation-was finally matched to the actual rapist.
The case drew a lot of attention in the press and among American human rights lawyers. The police had pushed the youngsters past their breaking point to make false confessions.
Lind found a number of other reasons for false confessions, such as the desire to protect a loved one. Or sometimes the mentally disturbed might confess in order to please the authorities. Fatigue, intoxication, fear of punishment, ignorance of law, personality… There were many reasons, but often the determining factor was that the accused was under duress during the interrogation.
Lind didn’t have access to the recording of Korpivaara’s first interrogations, but she recalled how downtrodden he had appeared. A number of the reasons listed for false confessions were applicable in his case.
Lind brushed a thin layer of snow off her shoulders as she walked into the Alamo Bar. She immediately spotted a group of men sitting on the right. The neatly dressed woman caught their attention.
The bartender smiled when Lind asked for a cup of coffee.
“You sure you’re in the right place?” he asked.
“If you don’t have coffee, I’ll have tea.”
“We’ve got coffee, and it’s fresh, too,” the man said and poured her a cup.
Lind set a euro coin on the counter, picked up her cup, and headed to the men’s table.
“Is one of you Jaakko Niskala?”
The men were in their forties, and each had a mug of beer in front of him. One of them looked a little older and had a full mustache. Another was a large man, and the third had a long, narrow face, his hair styled in a crew cut.
“Why do you ask? You some kind of reporter?” the oval-faced man asked aggressively.
Lind figured the man was Niskala, since he’d been the one to react to the question. Anyone else would’ve just answered the question with a “no.” Lind stood by the table and decided not to play any games.
“I’m Jorma Korpivaara’s defense attorney. My name is Lind.”
“We’ve got nothing to do with that case,” the man with the large mustache growled.
“You must be Pekka Rautalampi, and that third guy is Heikki Lahtela,” Lind said.
She had seen the others’ names on a document Joutsamo had at the station. The note said “the Alamo gang” and a Google search led her to the bar. Lind knew the men had been released the night before.
Niskala had reacted, but with the others she just guessed.
Despite Niskala’s angry expression, the mustache man told her to sit down.
“We all got out of jail last night,” Mustache-Rautalampi said.
“And you’ve been sitting here ever since?”
“Heh, we did go home to crash for a few hours.”
Lind turned to Niskala. “Why did you ask if I was a reporter?”
“One of those stopped by here a little while ago. We didn’t tell her anything, and I’m not sure if we should talk to you, either.”
“I’m on Jorma’s side,” Lind said and noticed now that the men were quite intoxicated.
“How’s Jorma?”
“He won’t be able to hit the bar scene for a while; he’s lying on his bunk.”
“He must be feelin’ shitty.”
“I’d think so. I haven’t seen him today.”
“What’s he gonna get for this?”
“Manslaughter is usually eight to ten years, but a first-time offender can get away with half of that.”
“Even that’s a long time in the brig,” the mustache man said and took a sip of beer.
Lind kept quiet to give the men a chance to elaborate.
“Yeah, the paper had a small article on it. It’s a strange case,” the large-framed Lahtela grunted.
“How so?”
“I wouldn’t have pegged Jorma for a killer.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” the man said, sipping his beer. “He just isn’t the type, in my opinion.”
“Why do you say he isn’t the type?” Lind pressed.
Niskala interrupted.
“Heku, you don’t have to answer this broad’s questions.”
“No, I want to,” Lahtela said. “You’re on his side, right?”
Lind nodded. “That’s my job as his defense attorney, and that’s why I’m here. I want to see if there’s anything that could help Jorma.”
“I never figured he was violent in any way,” Lahtela continued. “Once when a brawl started here in the bar Jorma tried to calm everyone down. He didn’t want people to fight, you know?”
“Yeah. He tried to mediate it?”
“Yeah, exactly. He was a peacemaker. Like President Ahtisaari, ha-ha.”
Rautalampi joined in. “As far as I know he never committed any crimes, either. He was a loser like the rest of us, but a good-hearted one.”
“What was his relationship to Laura Vatanen?”
The men glanced at each other.
“Well,” Rautalampi began. “Out of all of us he was probably the closest to her. By the way, Darling used to sit in the chair you’re in right now. So we should call you Darling.”
Lahtela turned to Lind and tried to kiss her on the cheek. Lind leaned away, making him nearly fall off his chair, and the other two cackled.
“Did all of you visit Darling regularly?”
Lahtela pulled himself together, “I only went there once. She wasn’t my kind of thing; I prefer…a Thai masseuse, ha-ha.”
“Can you give a massage?” Niskala asked.
“I have my talents,” Lind replied. She would rather have left the drunken bunch, but she knew she had to play their game in order to get something out of them.