But that case would be investigated by the Patrol Unit rather than the Violent Crimes, since the man attacked a car, not a person.
Joutsamo’s day had begun with a typical “grandma” gig. An eighty-two-year-old female hadn’t answered her phone. Her daughter had gone to the apartment and found her mother dead in the bathtub. The police had been notified at eight in the morning.
Joutsamo, who came to work at nine, had started her day by going to the apartment on Tehdas Street and determined the death was accidental. The woman’s naked body hung over the bathtub ledge and she had a severe head trauma. The tub had water in it, so it seemed obvious that the woman had slipped and hit her head while trying to get into the tub. Lucky for the other tenants in the building, the faucet was turned off, and the building avoided extensive water damage. Joutsamo had completed the cause of death report.
She also made sure the documents for Korpivaara’s imprisonment were ready. Takamäki would come to Pasila in the afternoon.
Suhonen stepped into their shared office and threw his leather jacket over the back of his chair. He was wearing jeans and a black sweater.
“Hey,” Joutsamo said. “You’re late.”
Suhonen was the other VCU detective on duty for the weekend. Their shift went from nine in the morning to nine in the evening. Suhonen only took weekend shifts in extreme circumstances. This time it was on a bet he lost to Kulta. A month ago he had played Tetris on his work computer. Kulta asked how good he was, and Suhonen bragged that he was at least better than Kulta. Suhonen bet him fifty euros, thinking Kulta wouldn’t accept the bet, and threw in a weekend work shift. Suhonen was confident he would win, and of course he lost.
“Sorry,” Suhonen said, and Joutsamo noticed his tired eyes and slightly puffy face.
“Were you at a bar last night?”
“Yup.”
“Work-related?”
“Nope, off-duty.”
“Were you out late?”
“Pretty late,” Suhonen replied and turned his computer on. “But don’t worry, no need to drag out the Breathalyzer, I already did it downstairs and I’m clean.”
“Well, good,” Joutsamo said.
Sitting at his computer, Suhonen seemed a little glum.
“Everything alright?” Joutsamo asked.
Suhonen looked Joutsamo straight in the eyes. “Not really.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“I’m alright, but you might remember Eero Salmela.”
Joutsamo knew of Salmela, though she didn’t know him personally. He was Suhonen’s old friend and informant.
“Did something happen to him?”
“He’s in the hospital because he had a severe heart attack last week and another one yesterday, luckily milder this time.”
“Oh, no,” Joutsamo responded. “Is he in Meilahti?”
Suhonen nodded.
“He’s in good hands, then. How’s he doing?”
“They wouldn’t let me see him yesterday.”
Typing his password into the computer, Suhonen said, “I’ll call tomorrow and see if I can drop by.”
“He’s your…I mean our age, isn’t he?”
“He’s had a tough life,” Suhonen said, “but it’s still hard to believe when it happens to one of your friends.”
“Yeah,” Joutsamo agreed, and reminded herself that she should call her dad in Hyvinkää to see how he was doing.
“I guess he’ll be alright,” Suhonen said. “How are things around here?” he asked, opening the police database and typing in his password.
“Nothing urgent…a busy night, but nothing came to us. I already went and flipped over a grandma this morning, though.”
“It’s been a while since I had to do that.”
“I’d venture to say you may get a chance today.”
The Violent Crimes Unit did about 1,500 cause-of-death investigations every year, with cases varying from someone jumping under a subway train to someone hanging themselves in their home, from heart attacks to crib deaths to accidents. These investigations kept them much busier than violent crimes. The police investigated every single death that didn’t occur in a hospital or other institutions.
“I can hardly wait.”
He typed the name Maiju Rahkola into the police database. The results were what he expected: The woman was reported missing by Turku Police in June 2010. The case was still open, which meant that she hadn’t been found.
Salmela had mentioned that name to him at the hospital, and maybe he was onto something.
“Anna,” Suhonen said. “Does the name Maiju Rahkola ring a bell?”
Joutsamo shook her head.
“She’s a woman who disappeared in Turku a couple of years ago. She was seventeen at the time.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar. We constantly get missing person reports. I can’t even keep up with the cases in Helsinki.”
“We could check out a lead I got on the case,” Suhonen said. “But first I need to do something else.”
CHAPTER 18
SATURDAY, 12:30 P.M.
KAARINA, SOUTHWEST FINLAND
The Mercedes taxi turned off the main highway onto a narrow dirt road not wide enough for two cars. The road was flanked by small single family homes with traditional wood siding, surrounded by yards just big enough for a couple of apple trees or a small garden.
Real estate developers had built some new, larger houses in the area, but they hadn’t yet gotten their hands on this little islet. Reporter Sanna Römpötti wondered if one of the homeowners was too stubborn to sell, thus making it unfeasible for the developers to buy the other lots. But eventually these homes would be torn down and replaced by a townhouse ghetto.
“Number four would be the one on the right, the green one,” a silver-haired, fifty-year-old cab driver said with a west coast drawl.
“Okay,” Römpötti said.
“That’ll be twenty-two euros,” the driver told her, and Römpötti handed him a credit card. She had taken the train from Helsinki that morning, and now the taxi had brought her to the small town of Kaarina, about six miles southeast of Turku.
The driver piped up just as Römpötti was getting out of the taxi and thanking him.
“If I might say, I like your stories. They always have good angles.”
“Well, we’ll try to keep them that way,” Römpötti replied with a smile.
Once outside, Römpötti looked around and listened for a minute. She noticed the house could’ve used a new layer of paint and other upkeep. Traffic hummed on the Helsinki-Turku freeway half a mile away, but otherwise it was almost eerily quiet here. Römpötti drew in a deep breath of the fresh autumn air, which felt nice after the cab driver’s cheap cologne. She wondered why Helsinki got a lot more snow than southwest Finland.
Römpötti lifted the wooden hook off the top of the waist-high fence gate. Crooked concrete squares paved the way to the house. Römpötti climbed the steps and knocked on the door.
“It’s unlocked,” said a woman’s voice from inside the house.
Römpötti opened the lightweight door. A blue table and one chair sat on the covered porch; perhaps the widow drank her afternoon coffee here. Römpötti recognized the cold and damp smell of an old house: a mixture of mold, mice, and insulation.
“Hello,” said a seventy-year-old woman dressed in a brown cardigan and black pants. She had deep creases on her face and looked like she had worked hard her whole life.