Darling (16 page)

“We haven’t met before. You haven’t done many criminal cases, have you?” the reporter asked.

“No. The well-known attorneys get the
high profile cases. I got this one, well, partly by…coincidence.”

Römpötti let out a small laugh. Lind seemed to have a sense of humor. She was the kind of person
Römpötti could have a conversation with at a bar as well. That’s more than she could say for most lawyers.

“What
are you going to ask on camera?” Lind said, sounding insecure.

Römpötti
was familiar with the question and the tone. Sometimes she would share the objectives or line of her questions ahead of time, but not always.

“Just the basic facts
: What? Where? When? Why? That’s all.”

“Well, that’s plenty.”

“Shall we?” Römpötti urged, when she saw that Mustikkamӓki had the camera ready.

Lind took a big sip of coffee and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. As she stood up, she glanced at her reflection in the glass wall to check her attire.

Römpötti stood by the camera and led Lind to her spot. Mustikkamӓki asked the attorney to move a half step closer.

“Thanks,” he
said. “And we’re rolling.”

Römpötti
looked at Lind intently and asked, “What do you think about this case?”

The question confused
Lind, and she lost her focus for a moment. “What do I think—what do you mean?”

“What happened?” Römpötti rephrased her question.

“A twenty-six-year-old woman has been
killed and my client is the suspect.”

“
And, what does he say about it?”

Lind thought for a moment. The police had told the press that the suspect had confessed.

“He may not remember what happened.”

Römpötti
had assumed the interview would be routine, but now she perked up. She’d planned to ask about the motive, and the routine background question, but the attorney had just disputed facts from the police bulletin.

“Wait a minute. According to the police, the suspect confessed. Do you disagree?”

“The statement doesn’t represent the whole truth,” Lind said.

“How so?”

“My client was unable to recall all the events during the interrogation.”

“
So, did the police bulletin contain false statements?”

“Not false, but I don’t think the police should comment on
a suspect’s guilt or innocence, including confessions. Ultimately only the court can determine guilt.”

Römpötti looked at Lind who was standing in front of the camera with a determined look
. This wasn’t a routine interview after all, since the defense attorney disagreed with the police bulletin. She wanted Lind to give her a clear statement.

“The police say
the suspect has confessed. Do you disagree?”

“The police have their opinion
, and as a defense attorney I have mine.”

“Has the suspect made a confession?”

“My view differs from that of the police regarding my client’s guilt,” Lind said and immediately regretted it. But there was no way to take any of it back.

Römpötti
nodded, “Would you like to add anything?”

“I suppose that’s about it.”

Römpötti threw a glance at Mustikkamӓki who stopped the camera. This wasn’t an extensive, detailed interview; a few minutes were enough.

Maybe there was somethin
g to this case. For a minute Römpötti felt a faint respect toward Lӓhdesranta, but the feeling quickly disappeared. The news chief hadn’t had a sense of the case; he had merely given her a dumb case to chase.

But the fact that Lind di
sputed the police statement made it newsworthy and Römpötti figured this would be a good story. The reporter and the attorney exchanged business cards and agreed to get back in touch.

CHAPTER 14

FRIDAY, 3:00 P.M.

HELSINKI
POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA

Detective Lieutenant Takamäki stood in front of the camera in the police station lobby. He had changed out of his usual cardigan into something appropriate for a television interview—a navy blue suit coat, a white shirt, and a gray tie.

Mustikka
mӓki said the camera was rolling, and Römpötti began, “What is this case about?”

She passed the microphone to
Takamäki.

“It’s a rather typical homicide case for Helsinki. A twenty-six-year-old woman was killed in an apartment in North Haaga. The suspect is a forty-year-old man who knew the victim.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“We can’t disclose that yet due to our ongoing investigation. But I can say it was vicious.”

“So the victim
died at the scene?”

“Yes.”

“How did the police discover the suspect?” Römpötti asked. She was starting with a few easy questions.

“We conducted a routine investigation, such as lifting fingerprints on the crime scene.”

“Was it domestic violence?”

“The victim and the killer knew each other, but they didn’t live together.”

“What was the motive?”

“The victim and the killer h
ad an argument before the incident, but the reason for that isn’t clear.”

Römpötti
looked Takamäki in the eye.

“You’re saying ‘killer
.’ How do you know this forty-year-old is the killer?”

“Well, the correct term is ‘suspect
,’ of course. But the police consider the case solved.”

“How
?”

“
Based on information gathered by the Forensics team, and the suspect’s confession.”

“Has the man confessed?”

“He has confessed.”

“Indisputably?”

“Yes,” Takamäki said, confused by the question.

Römpötti
thanked the detective and lowered the microphone. She got what she wanted. She could build a juicy controversial story with the comments from the detective and the attorney. Mustikkamӓki turned off the camera.

Takamäki
took a step to the side and said, “I still can’t figure out why you’re interested in this case.”

Römpötti
answered with a question. “What sort of woman was the victim? Did she belong to a group of drinking buddies?”

“In a way yes, but…”

“But what?”

“You haven’
t asked if there was anything special to this case.”

“Is there?”
Römpötti asked, her curiosity piqued.

Takamäki
had planned on telling her the one detail necessary to see the full picture.

“There is one thing. The victim was twenty-six years old, but mentally she was much younger. She was
mentally handicapped. I don’t know all the medical details.”

“She was
mentally handicapped and she lived alone?”

“Apparently the disabilities were mild
, and she could manage on her own, most of the time anyway.”

“That’s interesting,”
Römpötti said and asked a few more questions.

* * *

Joutsamo sat at the table in the Homicide Unit’s meeting room, eating a salad she had picked up in a nearby grocery store. She had spent the day transcribing the interrogations—a slow, tedious task given she had a few hours’ worth of material. And there would be more after the tenants of the Nӓyttelijӓ Street apartments and other witnesses were questioned. She still needed to set up an appointment to interrogate Laura Vatanen’s mother.

Kulta sat down
across from her with a cup of coffee. He had some documents with him.

“The lab sent a report of that towel.”

“What towel?” Joutsamo asked.

“The one
that was found in Korpivaara’s apartment, apparently taken from Vatanen’s place. At least she had several of the same brand.”

“
And,” Joutsamo urged him on.

“The DNA tests are still ongoing, but apparently the towel only has
Korpivaara’s blood on it.”

“He probably hurt his hand in Vatanen’s apartment,” Joutsamo said.

S
he thought that they had already established that fact, although lab results were just starting to come in. On the other hand, it wouldn’t have been the first time lab results were duplicated. Several forensic tests were going on concurrently, and she couldn’t be sure which ones had been completed without looking at the file, which was at her desk.

“That was my thought, too, but Vatanen’s bl
ood type wasn’t on it,” Kulta said.

“Did they find anything in the
plastic bag that was discovered in the woods?”

Kulta shook his head. “No
pe. Nothing from the bloody paper towels found in the trash bin, either.”

“Okay,” Joutsamo said, turning back to her salad.

“Do you want me to ask them for more tests?”

“No hurry,” Joutsamo said. “It might well be
that the plastic bag has nothing to do with the case anyway.”

“Yeah, it might’ve been left in the bushes by some
junkies or drunks.”

“Based on all evidence, we have the killer
here, and there’s no rush. The DNA tests won’t come back till next week anyway.”

CHAPTER
15

FRIDAY
, 4:30 P.M.

NORTH HAAGA, HELSINKI

Lind didn’t own a car so she took a taxi from the courthouse to her office and
dropped off the documents from her real estate dispute case. She could bill the client for that leg of the trip, but from there she walked to the National Museum stop to catch a bus going to North Haaga.

It was snowing and the bus ride was slow in the slushy rush-hour traffic. Humidity fogged up the bus windows. Lind’s thoughts kept going back to the interview with Römpötti. She wondered if she’d gone too far in questioning the validity of
Korpivaara’s confession—which she had heard with her own ears. But it was done now. If it had been a newspaper interview, she could’ve asked the reporter to email her a draft of the story, but TV didn’t work that way.

The second
question she had written on her list the night before was: “Can an innocent suspect make a false confession?” She wasn’t interested in mentally-disturbed professional confessors, but regular suspects who confess to crimes they haven’t committed.

Lind had
read about a case from 1989. A twenty-eight-year-old woman jogging in New York’s Central Park was raped and left for dead in a ditch. She survived, but wasn’t able to identify the attacker. The police arrested five teenage boys who were found loitering nearby, and they confessed to the act on video. Later in court the boys denied everything. Despite the lack of forensic evidence, the court sentenced the boys to prison for five to twelve years. The victim was Caucasian and the convicted boys were blacks and Latinos.

In 2002
the police discovered that the real attacker was a convicted murderer and a four-time rapist. A DNA sample that had been found at the crime scene—and marked as unidentified at the time of the original investigation—was finally matched to the actual rapist.

The case drew a lot of attention in the press and among American human rights lawyers. The
police had pushed the youngsters past their breaking point to make false confessions.

Lind found a number of other reasons for false confessions, such as the desire to protect a loved one. Or
sometimes the mentally disturbed might confess in order to please the authorities. Fatigue, intoxication, fear of punishment, ignorance of law, personality… There were many reasons, but often the determining factor was that the accused was under duress during the interrogation.

Lind didn’t have access to the recording of
Korpivaara’s first interrogations, but she recalled how downtrodden he had appeared. A number of the reasons listed for false confessions were applicable in his case.

Lind brushed a thin layer of snow off her shoulders as she
walked into the Alamo Bar. She immediately spotted a group of men sitting on the right. The neatly dressed woman caught their attention.

The bartender smiled when Lind asked for a cup of coffee.

“You sure you’re in the right place?” he asked.

“If you don’t have coffee, I’ll have tea.”

“We’ve got coffee, and it’s fresh, too,” the man said and poured her a cup.

Lind set a euro coin on the counter, picked up her cup, and headed to the men’s table.

“Is one of you Jaakko Niskala?”

The men were in th
eir forties, and each had a mug of beer in front of him. One of them looked a little older and had a full mustache. Another was a large man, and the third had a long, narrow face, his hair styled in a crew cut.

“Why
do you ask? You some kind of reporter?” the oval-faced man asked aggressively.

Lind figured
the man was Niskala, since he’d been the one to react to the question. Anyone else would’ve just answered the question with a “no.” Lind stood by the table and decided not to play any games.

“I’m
Jorma Korpivaara’s defense attorney. My name is Lind.”

“We’ve got nothing to do with that case,”
the man with the large mustache growled.

“You m
ust be Pekka Rautalampi, and that third guy is Heikki Lahtela,” Lind said.

She had seen the others’ names on a
document Joutsamo had at the station. The note said “the Alamo gang” and a Google search led her to the bar. Lind knew the men had been released the night before.

Niskala had reacted
, but with the others she just guessed.

Despite
Niskala’s angry expression, the mustache man told her to sit down.

“We all g
ot out of jail last night,” Mustache-Rautalampi said.

“And you’ve been sitting here ever since?”

“Heh, we did go home to crash for a few hours.”

Lind turned to Niskala. “Why did you ask if I was a reporter?”

“One of those stopped by here a little while ago. We didn’t tell her anything, and I’m not sure if we should talk to you, either.”

“I’m on Jorma’s side,” Lind said and noticed now that the men were quite intoxicated.

“How’s Jorma?”

“He won’t be able to hit the bar
scene for a while; he’s lying on his bunk.”

“He must be feelin’
shitty.”

“I’d think so. I haven’t seen him today.”

“What’s he gonna get for this?”

“Manslaughter is usually eight to ten years, but a first-time offender can get away with half of that.”

“Even that’s a long time in the brig,” the mustache man said and took a sip of beer.

Lind kept quiet to give the men a chance to
elaborate.

“Yeah, the paper had a small article
on it. It’s a strange case,” the large-framed Lahtela grunted.

“How so?”

“I wouldn’t have pegged Jorma for a killer.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” the man said, sipping his beer. “He just isn’t the type, in my opinion.”

“Why do you say he
isn’t the type?” Lind pressed.

Niskala interrupted.

“Heku, you don’t have to answer this broad’s questions.”

“No, I want to,” Lahtela said. “You’re on his side, right?”

Lind nodded. “That’s my job as his defense attorney, and that’s why I’m here. I want to see if there’s anything that could help Jorma.”

“I never figured he was violent in any way,” Lahtela continued. “Once when a brawl started here in the bar
Jorma tried to calm everyone down. He didn’t want people to fight, you know?”

“Yeah. He tried to mediate it?”

“Yeah, exactly. He was a peacemaker. Like President Ahtisaari, ha-ha.”

Rautalampi joined in. “As far as I know he never
committed any crimes, either. He was a loser like the rest of us, but a good-hearted one.”

“What was his relationship to Laura Vatanen?”

The men glanced at each other.

“Well,” Rautalampi began. “
Out of all of us he was probably the closest to her. By the way, Darling used to sit in the chair you’re in right now. So we should call you Darling.”

Lahtela turned to Lind and tried to kiss her on the cheek. Lind leaned away, making him nearly fall off his chair, and the other two cackled.

“Did all of you visit Darling regularly?”

Lahtela pulled
himself together, “I only went there once. She wasn’t my kind of thing; I prefer…a Thai masseuse, ha-ha.”

“Can you give a massage?” Niskala asked.

“I have my talents,” Lind replied. She would rather have left the drunken bunch, but she knew she had to play their game in order to get something out of them.

“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.”