Cold Trail (9 page)

“Y
ou think you might have a minute, buddy, to check and see if you guys have the footage there? It happened around 7 p.m. yesterday on the railroad side of the mall. Of course I’d be particularly interested in any shots of the car.”

“O
f course. It’ll take me a second, though. I can call you back.”

T
akamäki gave Aho his cell phone number, thanked him, and ended the call.

“W
hat footage are you looking for?” Suhonen asked from the doorway. Takamäki hadn’t noticed him. Suhonen stepped in.

“I
t doesn’t have anything to do with this Repo case.”

“W
ith what, then?” Suhonen continued. His curiosity was piqued, because it wasn’t every day that a lieutenant called and asked for surveillance camera footage himself. That was a job for subordinates.

“
Jonas got hit by a car over at Sello yesterday. I’m just making sure they hold on to the shopping center’s surveillance cam images.”

“H
urt bad?”

“N
ah,” Takamäki answered. “Not too bad. Broke his arm. But the driver fled the scene.”

Suhonen
thought for a second. “Isn’t that an Espoo police case? Or I mean, at least not yours?”

“Y
eah, it’s Espoo’s,” Takamäki admitted, before deciding to change to a less-awkward subject. “Why isn’t Repo back behind bars yet?”

Suhonen
smiled at his lieutenant’s clumsy attempt to change the subject. “’Cause we haven’t found him.”

“Y
ou think you might want to do that?”

“D
o you remember when you ordered me to attend that class given by the Security Police last summer?” Suhonen asked, sitting down in his favorite spot on the windowsill across from Takamäki’s desk.

“W
hat does that have to do with this?”

“T
here was this one army intelligence officer lecturing about military intelligence, and he had a PowerPoint slide that he flashed up on the screen. It was this matrix that said that the most important task of military intelligence is to determine the other nation’s capability and intentions. That’s what helps you assess threats.”

“A
nd?”

“W
ell, I’ve been trying to apply that matrix
to Repo. Does this Repo have the capacity for wrong-doing? Okay, he killed his wife years ago, so theoretically the potential exists. Still, I’d estimate his capability as being pretty minimal.”

Takamäki
tried interjecting, “I wouldn’t.”

“L
et me finish. What about his intentions? That’s a trickier thing, because we don’t know why he fled. It’s still pretty hard to see it as a particularly planned escape. It seems to have been more of a momentary impulse. Repo doesn’t belong to a criminal gang, so we can’t conclude, for example, that he’s off on some vendetta he was ordered to handle. That being the case, I would also assess his intent to commit wrong-doing as pretty minimal. And since both factors are low, the threat assessment is also pretty low. The guy’s a sheep
.
”

Takamäki
looked at Suhonen. He tried to keep his face serious, but a smile crept into his eyes.

“B
ut guess what. You’re not some major from military intelligence, you’re a...”

Takamäki
held a brief pause, and Suhonen stepped into the trap.

“I
’m a what?”

“Y
ou’re a shepherd. So get that lost sheep back into the fold, pronto.”

Suhonen
stood and saluted, raising a hand to his nonexistent cap.

“Y
es, sir!”

At that moment,
Joutsamo walked up to the door. “I’m headed up to Riihimäki now,” she said, before registering the scene. “All riiight. No need to explain.”

CHAPTER 7

TUESDAY, 11:
20 A.M.

RIIHIMÄKI POLICE STATION

Joutsamo was sitting in a small, windowless interrogation room. The preliminary investigation report for the Repo case lay open on the brown tabletop. Someone had etched the word “Fuck” into the table. The stack of papers was surprisingly slight, not even half an inch’s worth. She’d been reading the interrogation transcripts for an hour and was almost done.

The ca
se appeared relatively simple. Repo had been drinking at home with his wife. The next morning the police had found Repo sleeping in his bed and his wife sprawled out on the floor next to the kitchen table. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear. There was a ton of blood in the photos. That detail alone told Joutsamo that the woman had lived for some time after the deed, because the heart had kept pumping blood out of the carotid artery.

Joutsamo
jotted down
Cruelty = Murder?
in her notebook. She could of course verify from the verdict whether it was cruelty that tilted the sentence from manslaughter to murder, but it wasn’t a priority.

In the
first interrogations, Repo had vehemently denied the act. He claimed he had passed out in bed and didn’t remember anything about what had happened. A week later he had changed his tune, when his lawyer had been present at his questioning. According to the transcript, at that juncture Repo had said, “I consider it possible that I killed my wife, because evidently no other alternatives exist. I do not consider the act murder, but manslaughter. There was no way it was premeditated, and the act was neither exceptionally brutal nor cruel.”

It was plain as day from the statement that the lawyer had gotten
Repo to confess to the deed. Joutsamo made a note of the lawyer’s name: Mauri Tiainen. Repo had not offered any motive.

The
Repo family had lived in an apartment building. The neighbors had been interrogated, of course, and said that occasionally loud arguing could be heard coming from their apartment. Yet no one had heard anything of the sort on the night of the murder. No one had seen anyone else entering or exiting the apartment, either.

Repo
’s fingerprints had been found on the murder weapon. The photo docket contained a photo of a serrated eight-inch bread knife with a black handle. The blade was bloody. Powdered fingerprints could be made out in the close-ups. Looking from behind, they were on the left side of the handle. Joutsamo paused to work out how Repo had been holding the knife. Based on the fingerprints, he’d been gripping it the way you would normally hold a knife when you’re carving wood. Had the throat been slashed from the front or the back? There was no indication in the report. No DNA analysis had been conducted on the weapon, but the blood found on the blade matched the wife’s blood type.

The court-ordered
evaluation of Repo’s mental health had also been appended to the papers. That gave Joutsamo pause, because a psychological evaluation was a confidential document, and the police didn’t need it to do their work. Yet someone had delivered it to the police, and of course Joutsamo read it.

Repo
had not been diagnosed with any mental health problems. His father, Erik, had been a career military officer, and the family had moved frequently from base to base. The mother had worked in the base kitchens as a cook. Timo had told the doctor about his parents’ alcohol use, strict discipline, and corporal punishment, as well as continuous competition with his big brother, who was two years older.

“W
hen discussing childhood memories, the subject often mentions soccer, which appears to have been of significance to him. This indicates that, as a child, he looked outside the home for approval he was lacking.

“T
he subject says that in the 1960s, his father was suspected of causing the death of a serviceman in a hazing incident. Even though Erik was found not guilty, the matter had caused substantial friction within the family. The subject describes his father as having increased his alcohol consumption and grown more withdrawn.”

Timo
Repo had ended up serving in the army himself. He hadn’t made it into officer school, and had had to settle for the NCO academy. “The subject says he performed well at the institution he termed the ‘rat academy.’ Psychological evaluations
previously conducted on the subject and medical reports were acquired from the armed forces for the purposes of this mental health evaluation. They do not reveal any issues related to mental health.”

The
evaluation indicated that Timo had met his future wife, Arja, at a bar in Helsinki in the early ’90s. A one-night stand had led to a relationship and marriage in 1993. The wife had one childless marriage behind her. Repo had also told the psychiatrist that Arja and his father, Erik, had occasionally argued, because Arja had once belonged to the Communist Youth Association. Erik’s needling had prompted Arja to look into his old hazing incident. Timo had felt caught between a rock and a hard place, and visits to Timo’s parents had subsequently grown less frequent.

“T
he subject described his family life as normal. According to the subject, alcohol was consumed, but not to excess. The subject indicates that alcohol use did not lead to absences from work. In 1995, a child was born into the family, which, according to the subject, was a happy and anticipated event. Joel’s birth was a cause for joy, but the same year had also been marked by grief, as the subject’s mother died of cancer.”

Interesting,
Joutsamo thought. And yet the trip to Riihimäki hadn’t advanced the investigation in the least. She hadn’t found a single name in the papers that would have been useful in tracing Repo. No acquaintances, no childhood friends. Nothing.

S
everal things nagged at her, however. She found herself wondering about the bread knife and how Timo Repo had been gripping it at the moment of the murder.

Fifteen minutes later
, she knocked on the door of Detective Lieutenant Johannes Leinonen. Leinonen had led the Repo investigation and given Joutsamo the preliminary investigation report to read.

“
Come in,” Leinonen growled. He was sitting at his computer. A brown sport coat hung from the back of his chair. Sixty and gray, he was heavy enough that the buttons of his white dress shirt strained at the gut.

“T
hanks,” Joutsamo said, returning the stack of papers to Leinonen.

“F
ind anything?”

“I
have a couple of questions.”

Leinonen
gestured for Joutsamo to take a seat across from him. His office was just like Takamäki’s and that of a thousand other police
officers. The shelves were full of folders, and there were stacks of papers next to the computer.

“S
hoot.”

Joutsamo
referred to her notes. “In the first place, why was it classified as a murder?”

“D
id you take a look at those photos? That woman’s throat was slashed wide open.”

“
Repo initially denied the crime, and then he confessed. But only to manslaughter.”

“H
e had no choice,” Leinonen said. “The case was cut-and-dried. The lawyer, whatever his name was, I think it was Tiainen, talked some sense into him. Into Repo. No point fighting a clear case... That’s not going to help anyone.”

“B
ut it never reverted to manslaughter?”

“N
o, because the act was so brutal and cruel. The medical examiner estimated that the woman had been alive for at least several minutes after the deed.”

“W
ere any reconstructions done?” Joutsamo asked.

Leinonen
frowned and looked intentionally perplexed.

“W
hat is it you’re getting at? I thought you were looking for this Repo?”

“W
ere any reconstructions done?”

“N
o, nothing like that. The case was totally clear.”

“W
as her throat slit from the front or from behind?” Joutsamo asked, still thinking about the fingerprints on the knife.

“I
don’t know. Does it matter? His fingerprints were on the knife, and there was no one else there. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

Joutsamo
didn’t reply immediately. “I’m just trying to get inside Repo’s head and try to think where I might find him,” she said after a while.

“I
s this some new profiling thing, or?”

“Y
eah. We’re piloting it down in
Helsinki Homicide,” Joutsamo lied.

“H
ow about that,” Leinonen said. “More American BS, sounds like.”

“I
t’s a system developed by the Germans, as a matter of fact,” Joutsamo said, her face deadpan. “The Hannover police got really good results with it. But back to where Repo was standing when it happened. We can deduce from the bloodstains that the wife was on her feet when she was killed.”