“My groin feels pretty tight. Could you start with that?” Niskala asked.
“I could tie your dick in a knot, but I doubt it’s long enough.”
“Ooh,” Rautalampi chuckled.
Lind noticed Niskala’s ears turning red.
“Tell me one thing,” Lind said, getting back to the point, since she could tell she’d have to get out of there soon.
“How could Laura stand you guys?”
“Well, I dunno,” Rautalampi said. “She liked our shit and doled out plenty, too. I dunno, maybe she didn’t have anyone else.”
“Didn’t she have friends?”
“No. Sometimes she’d talk to some of the mothers who were out in the yard with their kids, but they seemed pretty distant. They probably thought she’d snatch their babies.”
Lind felt sorry for the girl.
“Well,” Lahtela began. “There was the…”
Niskala’s sharp look stopped him.
“What?” Lind tried to get him to go on.
“Nothing. She didn’t have friends.”
“So she drank beer like a man?” Lind continued.
“Sometimes. You probably know Darling wasn’t quite playing with a full deck.”
“What do you mean?” Lind asked. This was news to her; the police hadn’t mentioned it.
“She was kind of handicapped. We never made fun of her, but sometimes she talked childish nonsense. She was a full-grown woman, though.”
“How could you tell she was handicapped?”
“How should I put it delicately? Darling didn’t quite act her age.”
“But she lived alone?”
“Yeah. She didn’t get along with her old lady so the mother got her the apartment and came in to vacuum and do the dishes for her sometimes-probably outta guilt.”
Lind felt awful. It turned her stomach to think of a mentally disabled girl with these men.
“It didn’t bother you that she wasn’t all there?”
“She was a full-grown woman,” Niskala grunted.
She knew she had to get away from these sons-of-bitches before she locked the door from the outside and burned down the bar. And her client Korpivaara was one of them. For a minute she second-guessed her decision to defend him. Even defense attorneys had their limits.
She pulled out business cards and handed one to each of the men.
“Call me if you think of anything.”
Her face suddenly pallid, Lind grabbed her coat. She managed to get three feet outside the door before she vomited in the parking lot. An older man with a small poodle on a leash looked at her reprovingly and said, “You should grab life by the horns and stop that drinking.”
The men with their beer mugs missed the episode. Mustache-Rautalampi shook his head and said, “An odd bird, that lawyer.”
“How so?” Lahtela asked.
“Well, we were Darling’s friends. She liked us. Without us she had nobody.”
* * *
Nea Lind and Laura Vatanen’s mother sat in the Jorvi Hospital cafeteria. “I’ve already talked to the police,” said Marjaana Vatanen who was dressed in a nurse’s white coat.
After some coaxing, Marjaana had agreed to meet with Lind, and they had about fifteen minutes, the length of her coffee break.
Lind figured the police had asked the same questions, but she too wanted to know about Laura Vatanen’s past, living alone, and how she ended up with the Alamo crowd. Marjaana Vatanen’s answers were short and matter-of-fact. She talked about the disability, their arguments, and Laura’s problems at work. The mother blamed herself for letting things get to that point.
“What should you have done?”
“It’s pointless to think about it now, but I probably should’ve had her placed in some institution.”
Lind wasn’t sure if she should ask it, but she had to.
“Were you aware that several men used your daughter?”
Marjaana Vatanen’s face fell as she asked, “Used her? How?”
“Sexually,” Lind replied.
“What? I knew she drank with them, but… So, was it the ones from Alamo?”
Lind nodded and said, “Your daughter took them to her apartment.”
“They raped my girl. Oh, shit.”
“I don’t know if it was rape. The men say it was consensual.”
“It is rape when the girl is mentally thirteen years old,” Marjaana Vatanen said, her face turning red.
The nurse buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
Lind wondered if the mother actually hadn’t realized what had been going on. If the girl drank with men like the Alamo gang, it would inevitably lead to sex. Marjaana Vatanen must have imagined her daughter to be better than that.
“What the hell. Why didn’t the police tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
Marjaana Vatanen twisted her face.
“And what’s your role in this? Are you trying to get the fucking killer and his rapist buddies off the hook?”
Lind was taken aback by the rage spewing from the woman.
“No. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of what happened,” she replied calmly.
“Quit your self-righteous act, you damn bitch,” Vatanen hissed. If you let my daughter’s killer off scot-free, I’ll kill you!”
Marjaana Vatanen’s eyes were full of hate as she stood up and stormed out of the cafeteria.
Lind watched the woman and wondered about her rage. She had lost her temper quickly. Even more, she had threatened to kill her.
Lind heard her phone ring. It was Römpötti.
* * *
Joutsamo turned off her computer. She had typed up most of the interrogations. She had listened to and analyzed the material as she worked, but nothing had changed her view of Korpivaara’s guilt. The man had the means, motive, and opportunity to do it. The proof was a combination of the Forensics investigation and the confession. As soon as the rest of the Forensics results came in, the case could be wrapped up and sent to the prosecutor. Joutsamo and Takamäki had talked about whether the rest of the Alamo gang could be suspected of sexual abuse.
By law, having sex with a person who was unable to fully protect themselves due to limited mental capacity might constitute sexual abuse. But it would be difficult to get the men convicted on these grounds, as Laura Vatanen had been deemed capable of living alone.
Joutsamo stood up and grabbed her coat from the closet. The TV was set on mute; she needed to turn it off. She was done for the day, especially since she’d be on call with Suhonen and their unit on Saturday. She hadn’t seen Suhonen at work today, but who knew what projects he was working on.
The computer shut down. As she was getting up, Joutsamo noticed Kulta sitting at his computer, looking at photos. She saw naked women among them.
“What are you looking at?” Joutsamo asked.
Kulta shook his head.
“These were on Korpivaara’s computer. The geeks just brought me the CD. There are hundreds or thousands of them, I haven’t counted.”
Joutsamo took a closer look at the photo on the screen. The woman looked young-not a child, but a teenager.
“Almost all of them are teenage girls. They don’t look Finnish to me,” Kulta said. “But it’s hardcore, for sure.”
Kulta clicked on a few pictures. They were clearly X-rated porn: a man and a girl, two girls, two men and a girl.
“Did he download these off the internet?”
“That’s what the computer guys said. They gave me a server address, but I don’t understand anything about it.”
“Why was Korpivaara into this kind of porn?” Joutsamo wondered.
“Why is anybody? It’s about fantasies. Some can imagine things, others need pictures, and yet others videos.”
“Were the movies in his apartment the same stuff?”
“I took a quick look,” Kulta said, shaking his head. “They were the same shit. And there were the edited pictures with Laura Vatanen’s face glued to the bodies.”
Joutsamo looked at the filthy picture on the screen.
“This guy might be more insane than we thought.”
“The modern scientific term for a sexual deviant is paraphiliac but I would use the good old term, ‘perv.’”