Cold Trail (7 page)

“A
re we going to ring the doorbell?”

“N
o,” Suhonen said, revealing a small, screwdriver-like device he had in his hand.

“Y
ou have a jigger?” Joutsamo wondered. You could open a standard lock in a split second with a jigger, if you know how.

“Y
up,” Suhonen said. “Search warrant regulations state you can only force entry when circumstances demand. This way we won’t be forcing our way, plus we won’t need a repairman to fix the door.”

Joutsamo would have been interested
in finding out where Suhonen had gotten the burglary tool in the first place, not to mention where he had learned to use it, but Suhonen wouldn’t have told her. Besides, there was no point entering the premises making noise, so she kept her mouth shut.

* * *

Timo Repo was dreaming about the ferry cruise to Sweden. His dad was carrying two bottles of Coca-Cola to the table for the boys and Carlsberg elephant beers for the grown-ups. Everyone was smiling, but no one was saying anything. The young woman at the next table looked Timo in the eye. Repo recognized her as his wife, and she was smiling, too.

A shadow
fell between them and quickly disappeared. It wasn’t part of the dream, and Repo’s eyes popped open. He couldn’t see anything out the window, but he was certain that someone had moved under the streetlamp.

He
cautiously got up. Was that rustling coming from outside? Repo snatched his gun and his coat from the coat rack. He wiped the floor with the sleeve of his black suit just in case any water drops had fallen from the coat, and then he slunk into the bedroom. There was a bullet in the barrel of his gun, but he decided to hide in the closet. This wasn’t the time for a confrontation yet.

* * *

Suhonen carefully twisted the jigger, now in the lock, from a small crank at its tail end. The device was designed to move the detainer disks into the same position as a key would.

It took Suhonen
less than twenty seconds to open the lock. The door creaked slightly as Suhonen pulled it by the handle. Joutsamo winced. The noise was definitely loud enough for someone who was awake inside to have heard it, but had it been loud enough to wake someone up? Not necessarily.

Suhonen
pulled out his Glock 22, crouched down, and entered first. He didn’t linger in the doorway—the street light behind him effectively turned him into a silhouette target. He edged right and waited there against the wall for a moment. It was darker inside than it was outside, and his eyes needed a moment to get used to the dimness.

The
house smelled like it had been uninhabited for a while.

The living room
appeared empty. Suhonen carefully rose and advanced, hugging the wall. Joutsamo followed, silently closing the outside door.

Suhonen
waited at the corner of the dining room while Joutsamo slowly crept ahead, circling around behind the sofa. It didn’t take long before she had a view of both the dining room and the kitchen in their entirety. They were empty, too. Joutsamo gestured Suhonen onwards. The bathroom came first, and Suhonen quickly checked it.

There was only one room left.
Suhonen pulled open the bedroom door. The detectives crouched down on either side of the doorway. The interior walls of the old house wouldn’t offer much protection from bullets. Suhonen glimpsed in quickly. There were curtains in front of the windows, but they let in enough light for him to note the twin bed in the middle of the room. On the left wall there was a desk and on the right, a closet.

Suhonen
rose and entered. Joutsamo followed.

“
Empty,” Suhonen said, holstering his gun. He flipped on the light switch next to the door.

* * *

Repo stayed as quiet as possible at
the back of the cramped closet. The coats were in front of him, but he could still make out the strip of light between the closet and the floor. The old clothes were dusty, and the pungent funk of mothballs filled his nose. He felt like coughing, but he chased the thought from his mind. He was clenching his pistol tightly. The grip felt sweaty.

Repo
heard a woman’s voice, “Yeah, that would have been a little too lucky, finding him crashed out here on the bed.”

Of course
: they were cops, Repo thought. That made him momentarily reconsider the circumstances and the resolution he had come to in the closet. Maybe he should shoot after all. A burglar or two he might have been able to catch off guard, but police officers? There were at least two of them, but there might be as many as ten.

Yes, he’
d pull the trigger. He wasn’t going back to that cell.

“T
oo bad he isn’t,” answered a male voice.

“S
hould we have a look around?” Repo heard the woman ask. The footfalls approached and stopped at the door. She must have been standing right in front of the closet, because the strip of light at the floor dimmed.

Repo
could barely breathe now. If the closet door opened, he would shoot.

“N
o one’s slept in that bed. Those blankets are army-regulation sharp,” the man said.

“O
kay. I’m going to have a quick look at the desk and the kitchen. You take the living room.”

The
man paused. “What is it you want me to look for?”

“P
hotographs of Repo. Friends, names, anything that will help us with the case.”

“O
kay. There was some mail there in the entryway, but it’s going to be Old Man Repo’s.”

The
woman walked away, presumably toward the desk.

* * *

Joutsamo scanned the room once more. The home of a lonely old man. A lamp and a couple of books were on the nightstand. The book on top appeared to be the memoirs of a Finnish man who had served in the French Foreign Legion:
Trained for Pain, Trained
to Die
. The bookmark was halfway through.

S
everal medications lay on the dark surface of the desk. Joutsamo recognized some from her Narcotics days as hard-core
painkillers that junkies used as substitutes for heroin. There were also three boxes, which Joutsamo quickly rummaged through. It was old crap: commemorative coins and freebie promotional gear. No photo albums or address books.

Maybe they’d be
in the closet? Joutsamo decided to check and started walking back toward it.

“A
nna,” Suhonen called from the living room. “Come take a look at this.”

Joutsamo
hesitated for a second, and then walked out of the bedroom.

Suhonen
was standing at the TV, holding something in his hand.

“W
hat is it?”

“G
et a load of this,” said the undercover officer, holding up the photo taken on the deck of the cruise ship. Joutsamo examined it in silence.

“T
he old man blacked out his son’s face, but he still keeps it on display. Why? And in a spot like that?” Joutsamo asked, even though she already knew the reason.

“Y
ou want me to answer that?”

“N
o,” Joutsamo said.

The father had disowned his son
.

Suhonen
was quiet for a moment. “Let’s get out of here. We’re not going to find anything.”

Joutsamo
continued gazing at the photo as Suhonen turned off the lights, first in the bedroom and then everywhere else. Joutsamo set the photo back down on the TV.

“T
he brother,” Suhonen said, as he closed the front door behind him. “Let’s go have a chat with him.”

* * *

Repo decided to wait in the closet ten more minutes, but it stretched to twenty before he dared to crack the door. The gun was still in his hand. The air in the bedroom felt cool, and he emerged warily from behind the coats, pistol cocked. The bedroom was empty. Repo had expected one of the cops would have stayed behind to lie in wait for him.

He
walked into the kitchen in the dark and turned toward the living room.

Repo
jumped. He was caught so off guard he didn’t even have time to raise his weapon. A thin man in a long coat was standing there in the pale light of the streetlamp, and for a moment Timo Repo thought he had come face to face with his father.

He could only
see half of the old man’s face, but that was enough.

“W
ell, well, look who’s here,” Otto Karppi said in a reedy voice, aiming a shotgun at Repo.

CHAPTER 5

MONDAY, 7:50 P.M.

JORVI
MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL, ESPOO

Takamäki raced into the spartan
lobby of Jorvi Hospital, out of breath. Near the main entrance was an information desk with a few windows,
but only one was open. A fifty-year-old woman was explaining something to a bored-looking guy in a lab coat.

Takamäki
scanned the room, but didn’t see his wife. Plenty of images had gone through his head during the drive: his unconscious son being transported by ambulance, a breathing tube down his throat, the X-rays and MRI of his head at the hospital, the suspected brain damage.

Takamäki
’s sweaty shirt was glued to his back, and his hands were trembling.

T
he conversation at the info desk seemed to be going nowhere fast, so Takamäki decided to take matters into his own hands. The floor was marked with stripes in various colors: black, red, orange, lavender. The lieutenant had spent plenty of time interrogating assault victims in hospitals, including Jorvi, and so he knew what the colors meant. Yellow led to Surgery, red to X-ray. Takamäki picked the yellow one.

The line
led Takamäki down the corridor to a nurse’s station. A few orderlies in white coats were leaning against the desk. One had ominous bloodstains on his lapels. The lieutenant momentarily considered pulling out his badge but decided against it.

“H
ello,” he said in a serious tone.

“H
ey,” was the expressionless response of one of the orderlies, a guy with a buzzed head.

“
Jonas Takamäki was brought here a little while ago,” he announced, his voice quivering.

N
one of the orderlies responded immediately. Takamäki wondered whether that was a bad sign.

“S
orry, we don’t know names. You might wanna try the info desk, back where you came from.”

“U
mm, 16-year-old kid. Bike accident.”

Buzz-cut
glanced at his buddy. “Oh, him. Yeah, what about him?”

“I
’m his father.”

“All right.
I can take you there.”

Takamäki
noticed a familiar-looking bicycle helmet that was split at the side. Ugly visions and some that were worse than ugly flooded into his head. “Is that his?”

B
uzz-cut nodded.

“H
ow bad is it?” Takamäki gulped, as the orderly stopped at a door.

“H
e should be in here.”

The
orderly knocked, and a woman’s voice responded with an “Uh-huh?” Buzz-cut opened the door and let Takamäki in.

It
was a normal hospital room. A nurse in a white coat was at the treatment table, and Jonas was lying on it. Takamäki saw his bloody shirt.

“T
his is the father,” the orderly announced and walked out.

The nurse turned away from
Jonas and gave Takamäki a friendly smile. “It’s nothing serious,” she immediately said. “Just a broken arm.”

Takamäki
sighed, and Jonas turned to look. Takamäki registered his son’s relatively bright eyes. The kid was grimacing a little from the pain, but managed a grin.

Takamäki
came over to the head of the bed and stroked his son’s hair extremely tenderly; his hand barely made contact. “Hey, buddy. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“T
he helmet took the worst of the blow,” the nurse said. “But there’s still the potential for a mild concussion. The doctor will examine more closely in a bit. We’re definitely looking at X-rays and a cast, though.”

The nurse continued cleaning the wounds on
Jonas’s right arm.

“I
t wasn’t my fault. I had a green light. He went through a red light.”

“T
hat doesn’t matter right now,” Takamäki said, still stroking his son’s hair. “What’s important is that it wasn’t anything more serious.”