The detective lieutenant had a problem. A thirty-two-year-old redhead, Jana Puttonen, was being held in a cell at police headquarters.
The detainee, who originally hailed from central Finland, was a teacher at a North Helsinki elementary school. A few hours ago she had been arrested on suspicion of blackmail.
Detective Sergeant Anna Joutsamo had interrogated the suspect and then briefed her sharp-featured, close-cropped lieutenant. Three separate police reports had spurred the investigation. In each instance, Puttonen had sent dubious photographs to the homes of three separate individuals. The North Helsinki precinct had connected the dots between the incidents, and the case had been transferred to the Violent Crimes Unit, which handled blackmail cases.
In and of themselves, the photos were relatively innocuous. One was of a kiss; in another, a woman had her arms around a man’s neck; and in the third, a woman’s hand was placed provocatively on the man’s thigh. There was a different man in each photo, but the woman was the same. In the pictures, Puttonen was wearing heavy makeup and a black wig.
During the investigation, the police had quickly figured out that all the men were fathers of students in Puttonen’s class. The photos had unexpectedly arrived at the men’s homes in the mail, the envelopes addressed to their wives. The fingerprints had matched Puttonen’s, and she didn’t deny having sent the letters. The problem in terms of a criminal investigation was that Puttonen wasn’t demanding anything from the men or their wives. She had simply sent the photographs.
The teacher had revealed her motive during Joutsamo’s interrogation. The children of the families had harassed her at school, and Puttonen wanted to get back at them. She had tried changing schools, but new bullies always surfaced. Puttonen had claimed she had no problem dealing with the thumbtacks left on her chair, but the sexist slurs and the vandalism, like the gum in her car lock, were too much. She had even arranged special parent-teacher nights on the theme, but the parents of the problem children never showed.
So she had wanted to get back at the parents. She had figured out who the fathers of the bullies were, and, at an opportune moment, had flirted her way into their company. Finding someone to take a photo with a cell phone was never a problem. Puttonen had told Joutsamo that she didn’t have any demands as far as the men were concerned. Getting back at them was enough.
Takamäki had initially opened the green-covered book at the Post-it marked “EXTORTION.” In order to meet the description of the crime, the perpetrator had to be guilty of coercing the other party to relinquish assets under a force of threat. The photographs could be interpreted as a threat, but no assets were at stake.
The photographs could also be interpreted as causing suffering or slander, but the disseminating of information infringing on one’s privacy required that the photos be made accessible to a number of people. That had not occurred.
Libel was not an option, because no false statements were involved, nor did the images degrade the men. Their expressions indicated that they had been perfectly happy to appear in them.
Disturbing the domestic peace? Puttonen hadn’t entered anyone’s home or caused any sort of public disturbance, and she had only sent one photograph to each family.
Vandalism? Nothing had been broken. Fraud? No financial loss was involved. Violating a restraining order? No restraining orders had been filed in the case. They wouldn’t be able to wring any kind of sex crime out of it-the prosecutors would laugh in their faces.
Takamäki couldn’t come up with a crime, which didn’t actually disappoint him. To tell the truth, his sympathies were with the teacher. If families didn’t keep their brats in line, why should teachers have to? Especially when they had been stripped of all means of doing so. Not that Takamäki missed those days. He remembered his own detentions all too well, which during the 1970s had meant standing on the school’s tile floor: your feet had to stay within one twelve-by-twelve-inch square.
This was one of the more bizarre cases to come to the Violent Crimes Unit. Still known colloquially as Homicide, the unit got all sorts of incidents to investigate, from improperly installed electric stoves to beached boats to missing persons.
Takamäki’s cell phone interrupted his reverie, but it didn’t matter anymore. He had already decided that they’d release Puttonen for the simple fact that no crime had been committed. One-time harassment was not a punishable offense.
“Hello,” Takamäki answered. He never offered his name unless he recognized the caller’s number.
“Takamäki?” asked a male voice.
“Who’s this?”
“Helmikoski, EOC.”
Takamäki remembered the broad-shouldered lieutenant from the Emergency Operations Center. If Takamäki’s memory served him correctly, he had transferred there from the department in the neighboring city of Vantaa.
“Yeah, it’s me. What is it?”
“Have a case for you.”
Takamäki glanced at the clock on his computer screen. A few minutes past five. Theoretically the day shift had already ended, but the Puttonen case had demanded some extra time. No other VCU lieutenants were around, or at least available.
“What kind?
“Escaped convict.”
Wow, Takamäki thought. At least it wasn’t a violent standoff between motorcycle gangs or a headless corpse.
“Who?”
“Timo Repo.”
“Who is he?” Takamäki asked, writing down the name.
“Fifty. Doing life for murdering his wife.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” Takamäki replied. The crime had probably taken place somewhere outside greater Helsinki, because Takamäki remembered all the local murders.
“Was at his old man’s funeral at Hietaniemi. The prison guard let him go to the bathroom at Restaurant Perho and the guy never came back.”
“Of course not,” Takamäki said, already planning how they should organize the search. “Any sightings since the restaurant?”
“Possible but not definite sighting near the railway station twenty minutes ago. I’ve got several units looking for him, and the security companies have been alerted, but there are a lot of directions you can head from the central train station.”
“You guys are still keeping an eye on it, though, right?”
“Of course.”
“Give me a little more on Repo. Gang member, or what’s his background? I’m mostly looking for an assessment of how dangerous he is.”
Helmikoski thought for a moment. “We don’t know much about him. A photo and some details of what he’s wearing, but that’s it. The guard who called in the escape was alone and not totally coherent.”
“Ri-ight,” Takamäki said. Like all prison escapes, the incident was already starting to frustrate him. The police had done their part: investigated the crime and gotten the perpetrator behind bars to sit out his sentence. But as soon as some other department screwed up, the case was tossed back in their laps.
“Anyway, the guard let him go to the bathroom by himself. So in all likelihood he’s not some hard-core gangster.”
“Just a murderer, tops,” Takamäki replied.
* * *
A couple of minutes later, Takamäki rose from his desk. He had printed out a few pages’ worth of background info on Repo. One was his photo.
Takamäki stepped into the room shared by Joutsamo, Kohonen, Suhonen, and a couple of other detectives. It was clearly larger than Takamäki’s cubbyhole, but had less space per occupant. Dividers decorated with photographs and papers separated the workspaces. From the window you could see the old courthouse. It was going to be renovated into Police HQ II, but Homicide wouldn’t be moving there.
Anna Joutsamo was at her computer, typing with her headphones on. The thirty-four-year-old brunette was wearing jeans and a sweater. There was no one else in the room. She hadn’t heard Takamäki enter and didn’t realize her supervisor was there until he was standing right next to her.