Cold Trail (21 page)

Joutsamo
shrugged. “Had to move. Is it possible he had some hideaway somewhere nearby where he holed up right after the escape for twenty-four hours? And now he had to get moving.”

“I
n any case, he might be anywhere now. The car indicates a longer trip.”

“
Exactly. The Border Guard has been alerted about the car, but let’s see what we can do here in town.”

“
If he’s driving out of the country, I’d guess he’d head north and cross over into Sweden. Did he ever work there? Does he have any other connections to Sweden?”

Joutsamo
shook her head. “No foreign contacts have come up, Finnish ones either. We don’t know. This is one nasty manhunt.”

“W
e’ve definitely had some easier ones,” Takamäki admitted, opening up his email.

“K
ulta and I dropped by his father’s neighbor’s place, and something’s going on there. We’ll probably swing by again today,” Joutsamo said.

“H
eard anything from Suhonen yet?

“S
leeping. He sent a text message that he was out chasing Saarnikangas down all night, but no luck. Promised to come in this afternoon.”

“O
kay,” Takamäki said.

Joutsamo
tossed the day’s
Iltalehti
onto Takamäki’s desk. “Which takes us to item number two, which is also the number of the page where you’ll find the article—in addition to the front page, of course.”

The lieutenant
looked at the front page. The lead headline was about some TV celebrity’s drunken shenanigans. He didn’t recognize the name, but he was sure that his wife and sons would. Takamäki wasn’t interested unless the guy committed a violent crime or ended up the victim of one. According to the headline, all he was guilty of was being a sloppy drunk. At the bottom of the page, in clearly smaller print, it read “Murderer Escapes.” The lieutenant turned the page and was blasted by huge letters stretching across the spread: “SWAT Team Hunts Down Dangerous Convict.”

In the
main photo, armed and helmeted men were entering a building. It was a six-column shot—Takamäki realized that he now owed Turunen a beer. There was a balloon across the photo: “
Iltalehti
along for the raid.” Takamäki briefly scanned the article, but it didn’t offer any new information. A shorter piece featured a photo of Takamäki and a few of his comments. The set also
included Mary J. Juvonen’s commentary, where she criticized the prison authorities for their laxness. The police took a beating as well, for not immediately releasing the news about the fugitive’s escape and holding back Timo Repo’s photo.

“W
hat about the other papers?”

“B
lurbs, single column.”

“W
ell, this’ll give them a jolt to join in our manhunt,” Takamäki said. At that moment, his phone rang; it was a blocked number. Takamäki glanced at Joutsamo before growling hello.

“R
ömpötti here, hi.”

“H
i,” Takamäki answered. He knew the TV reporter well. “Look, I’m in kind of a rush right now.”

“T
his won’t take much time,” Römpötti replied, clearly annoyed. “Next time you invite reporters and photographers along on your raids,
can you give me a call, too?”

“T
hat’s not exactly how it went,” Takamäki said defensively. “But we can talk about that later.”

“S
o Repo’s still on the lam?”

“Y
ep,” Takamäki replied. The call ended with Sanna Römpötti promising to call back.

Takamäki
lowered his phone to the desk. “And now the other reporters think we’ve been giving
Iltalehti
preferential treatment.”

“O
h, shit,” Joutsamo said.

“I
’m betting Skoog can handle this
Iltalehti
case for us. I think he’d actually enjoy it. Knowing our deputy chief, he’d probably initiate a criminal investigation into Juvonen’s actions.”

Joutsamo
laughed. “Resisting police authority? That’s pretty nasty, but I don’t have a problem with it. On to item number three.”

“H
ow many of these are there?”

“T
his is the last one.”

“W
ell?”

Joutsamo
briefly considered how to formulate her words. “There’s something strange about that Repo murder case.”

Takamäki
looked his best investigator in the eye. “Tell me.”

“I
can also write you a memo, but last night I realized what’s been bothering me about it the most.”

“I
s that why you have those bags under your eyes?” Takamäki asked.

“
You’ve got some pretty nice ones yourself. And where’d you get that scratch on your cheek?”

“A
ll right, continue,” Takamäki replied, before the conversation got off on the wrong track.

“I
read the reports, but nowhere does it say how Repo’s wife’s murder came to the police’s attention. All that was written in the reports was that a patrol went to the scene.”

“I
t could have been some neighbor, couldn’t it?”

“A
neighbor would have called the police if the sounds of arguing or other noise would have been heard coming from the apartment. But no one heard anything or reported anything of the sort.”

“S
o in your view, a third person was at the scene who left and anonymously called it in to the police. And this third person has never been found.”

“E
veryone considered the case so clear cut that no one was interested in the third person, or just to be safe, let’s say the potential third person.”

“T
hat also sounds like an issue we might want to take upstairs to Skoog.”

“Y
ou think we should dig a little deeper?”

Takamäki
nodded. “I trust your instincts here. When you have time, write up a memo about the investigation reports and the verdict, and we’ll talk about how to proceed from there. Was there anything new in the night-shift reports?”

Joutsamo
shook her head and stood. “Some residential B&Es, assault and battery at a grill, petty theft
at a grocery store, and about twenty pounds of dynamite went missing from a residential construction site. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Takamäki
nodded and Joutsamo exited
.
Thefts of explosives didn’t happen every day, but they were by no means unheard of. Evidently construction crews stole them from each other. This conclusion was based on the fact that the stolen explosives were rarely recovered.

After
Joutsamo left, Takamäki thought for a second. He picked up his phone and took another look at the two photos he had shot the previous night in Tuomarila. He pulled the Sello surveillance camera images out of his desk drawer. Neither shot was particularly high quality, but it was the same car. The license plate alone confirmed that.

Takamäki
had talked with Jonas that morning. His son remembered the car having been green, but he’d been confused about other details, too. According to Jonas, he had been in a hurry to get home because he was supposed to go to hockey practice. The only problem was, Jonas’s team didn’t practice on Mondays. He didn’t remember the trip to the hospital at all. The doctor had ordered him to stay home from school at least until the end of the week.

Takamäki
lifted the receiver of his desk phone and tapped in Lauri Solberg’s number. The Espoo investigator answered right away. Takamäki asked if he’d have time for Takamäki to bring the photos by today. That suited Solberg. Takamäki also told him that his son didn’t remember the events clearly. Solberg still wanted to talk to the boy, and Jonas would have to bring the medical reports along to the interview, but they could agree on a day later.

“B
y the way,” Solberg said. “I don’t want to talk about those surveillance camera images over the phone, but just out of curiosity, is the vehicle a Toyota?”

“Y
eah.”

Solberg
read off a license plate number that stunned Takamäki into silence.

“Y
eah, that’s a match,” Takamäki muttered.

“T
hat Toyota burned last night in the parking lot at the Espoo ice arena.”

“B
urned?” Takamäki wondered.

“Y
up,” Solberg said smugly, pleased to have caught the lieutenant off guard.

“W
hat time?”

“W
hy?” Solberg asked, but continued nevertheless. “The fire department got the alarm at 5:53 a.m. Someone in the neighborhood called it in. Of course we were in contact with the lease holder. An Espoo resident by the name of Tomi Manner, who said he noticed the car had been stolen when he came home late last night from a business trip. Says he would have reported it missing this morning.”

“I
nteresting,” Takamäki managed to say, before asking a question to which he already knew the answer. “Who owns the car?”

“A
n Espoo leasing company.”

The first thought to pop into Takamäki’s head was that Manner had torched the car so he couldn’t be traced to the hit-and-run, but on the other hand, since Jonas hadn’t been badly injured, it wouldn’t have gotten him more than a fine. Then again, Manner didn’t necessarily know about the extent of the boy’s injuries. The next thought was insurance fraud. Something bizarre was definitely going on with the car, especially since he had seen it last night at Manner’s place with his own eyes. But he wasn’t about to tell Solberg that. At least not yet.

“H
ello,” Solberg said. “You still there?”

“Y
eah.”

“W
ell, this could be insurance fraud or something related to your son’s hit-and-run, so I sent Forensics
out to check his house in Tuomarila. Manner’s story might not be a total crock, because preliminary information indicates that someone other than Manner had been moving around in the vicinity of the garage where the vehicle was parked.”

Takamäki
reflexively wiped his cheek with the scratch on it. He wondered whether he had smeared blood somewhere or left fingerprints behind. What about footprints? He had been wearing Nike running shoes, thousands of pairs of which had probably been sold in Finland. He didn’t have anything to hide, but still he decided to not say anything to the Espoo police officer. “Okay, I’ll call you this afternoon to set up a time to bring those photos over.”

“S
ure. And, oh yeah,” Solberg added. “Nice shot of you in
Iltalehti
.”

Takamäki
ended the call, and his phone immediately rang again. It was Deputy Chief Skoog, ordering Takamäki and Suhonen to attend a noon meeting. Evidently the topic was important, but Skoog didn’t want to discuss it over the phone. What would Homicide be getting lectured about this time?

* * *

Joutsamo stepped into the office of Detective Lieutenant Leinonen at the Riihimäki Police Department. The big-bellied sixty-year-old was sitting at his computer again, and his brown sport coat hung from the back of the chair, just like during Joutsamo’s previous visit. He was also wearing a white shirt again, too. Maybe it was even the same one, because Joutsamo caught a pungent whiff of sweat.

“W
ell, what is it this time?” Leinonen growled. Joutsamo had called in advance to announce her visit. Before Joutsamo could get a word out, the gray-haired lieutenant continued, “Haven’t found him yet, huh?”

“N
o,” Joutsamo smiled. “We’re trying hard.”

Leinonen laughed
. “I’m sure you are. I read about the raid in
Iltalehti
. Do you guys down in Helsinki have to use the papers to handle all of your work?”

Joutsamo
was on the verge of giving a snappy response, but changed her mind. There was no point escalating the tension. She just stood there in the doorway, since Leinonen hadn’t asked her to sit. “Listen, one question did come to mind.”

“W
hat’s that?”

“W
ho informed the police that Repo’s wife, Arja, had been killed?”

“H
uh?” Leinonen rumbled. “I can’t remember, and I don’t have time for this shit.”

“
You didn’t seem to have time for it during the investigation either,” Joutsamo continued. “Tell me, how did the police know to enter the apartment?”

Leinonen
didn’t respond immediately. “What exactly is it you’re getting at?”

“T
hink about it. According to the preliminary investigation reports, none of the neighbors heard any sounds of arguing or fighting. The police go in and find the wife dead and Timo Repo passed out on his bed. Neither one of them called the police, that’s for sure. So who did?”