The caretaker bent down in front of the doorknob. His hands were trembling and the keys clattered to the floor. Strand shouldered the man aside and swung the battering ram into the lock. The door splintered ajar, but required one more blow near the security chain before it burst open.
“Esko! Go!” Strand commanded. The dog shot inside, barking.
Inside, the woman shrieked and shouted, “Call off the dog or I’ll kill it!”
Strand went first, a Glock pistol at the ready, and Suhonen took up the rear. The dog was barking and snarling.
The entryway was about ten feet long, and strewn with jackets and bags of garbage.
“The bathroom,” said Strand, and Suhonen ducked inside to check it out while Strand went ahead. He noticed some blood on the sink, but no people.
Suhonen heard the dog barking in the kitchen and Strand’s bellowing voice, “Please put down the knife.”
“Get the hell out of here!”
Suhonen glanced into the bedroom. Stuff was strewn everyone, but nobody there either.
“Drop the knife!” Strand commanded again.
“I’ll kill that dog!”
Suhonen came into the kitchen and stood next to Strand. The woman was wearing black sneakers and a hoodie. Her hair was greasy and knotted. Suhonen revised his estimate of her age to 35-drug use had left its mark, making her appear older than she really was.
“Call off the dog,” Suhonen said calmly. He saw an opportunity. She was no career criminal, just scared.
Strand kept the Glock leveled at the woman. “Esko. Heel.”
The dog barked once more, then backed up ten feet and sat at his handler’s side.
She clutched the knife for a moment longer before it clattered into the sink.
Strand worked fast, twisted her arms behind her back and clapped the cuffs on her wrists. Suhonen pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat her down on it.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I’m afraid of dogs,” she stammered. “Is Vesa really dead?”
“Yes,” he said, sitting down opposite her. “Overdosed and died in a train station bathroom stall.”
Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Mari. Mari Simola,” she managed to say.
“Mari, are there any drugs here?”
“N-no.”
Suhonen glanced at Strand. “Search the place.”
The woman burst into tears.
“You can probably guess that Esko’s not just a
K-9, but a drug-sniffing dog as well.”
Strand commanded the dog to search. His training had involved a game in which the dog received a reward for finding drugs. He was taught to identify hash first, then other narcotics.
The dog went eagerly to work and soon began clawing and barking at one of the base cabinets in the kitchen.
“What’s in there?” Suhonen asked the woman.
“Vesa’s speed. I don’t know where he gets it, but a couple days ago he got a big shipment. I don’t do that shit.”
Strand slid open the bottom drawer, and using latex gloves, removed a Ziploc bag of white powder and set it on the table. Suhonen guessed it to be one to two ounces of amphetamines.
“What’s your drug of choice?” Suhonen asked.
“Just weed. Can’t handle the other stuff.”
Suhonen glanced around the filthy apartment. “Where’s your stash?”
“There’s a couple joints in the bedroom nightstand. Nothing else.”
Suhonen and Mari stayed in the kitchen while Strand and the dog continued the search. The woman seemed to be realizing the gravity of the situation.
“Who has Vesa been hanging out with lately?”
“Uuh,” she said, staring at the table. “I don’t know their names.”
“Try to remember.”
She looked at Suhonen. “He’s really dead?”
Suhonen nodded. “Yes.”
Mari thought for a moment. “One of ’em was an ex-junkie named Juha… Saarinen, Saarnivuori or something like that.”
“Saarnikangas,” Suhonen answered. “Who else?”
Mari looked up at Suhonen. “I told Vesa he shouldn’t be hanging out with the Skulls, but he didn’t care.”
“Where’d he get the speed?”
“I know he went to Tallinn-could’ve bought it over there. Was it a bad batch? Is that why he died or did someone kill him?”
Suhonen shrugged. “We don’t know yet. Is that there from Tallinn?”
“Must be. He didn’t have the money to buy it anywhere else. He owed everybody something.”
Suhonen was still thinking. “The Skulls that Vesa hung out with. You know their names?”
“I saw ‘em once from the window when they picked him up in some American muscle car…it was black. A fat guy and a couple younger ones. I don’t know their names.”
“Okay,” said Suhonen. That was enough-the description matched Niko Andersson’s crew. “One more thing. This Juha Saarnikangas and the Skulls. You ever seen them together?”
Mari thought for a moment. “No. Definitely not.”
“You know someone by the name of Eero Salmela?”
“Name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“About my age. Wears a brown leather jacket with a lambswool collar all the time.”
“I don’t know him. Vesa probably did.”
Strand returned to the kitchen with his dog. There were three joints in the Ziploc bag.
Suhonen tried to comfort her, “Esko would protect you in a heartbeat. He’s actually a sheep in wolf’s clothing: nice to nice people.”
“Or nasty to nasty people?” Mari said, trying to force a smile.
Strand commanded the dog to stay and followed Suhonen into the hallway.
Suhonen spoke in a hushed voice. “This was partly my fault-I didn’t know she lived here too. I figured this was Karjalainen’s pad and we’d just search it for drugs.”
“Yea-ah,” he whispered. “No big deal.”
“We could get her for resisting arrest and drug possession, but as far as I’m concerned, we should just call it post-traumatic stress syndrome, you know, considering her man just died and all.”
Strand could see where Suhonen was headed. “She gave you some good intel?”
“Yes… But the truth is she only threatened Esko, so it was more like resisting a canine. We’ve been trailing Karjalainen and I know those drugs were his. The joints are probably hers, but let’s just have the dead guy take the rap for that.”
Strand shot him a look as though Suhonen was just trying to get in her pants, but the undercover officer read his mind.
“Come on, are you serious? Honestly, I’m more interested in Esko.”
Strand laughed aloud. “Okay. Works for me, but you’ll have to court Esko with some nice treats. He likes cheese pizza, and he can’t eat that at home. Too much pizza is bad for police dogs too.”
“Okay, I owe you one. If Esko ever needs dog-sitting sometime, call me.”
“You can be sure I won’t.”
They went back into the kitchen. Strand took off the cuffs and left with the dog. Suhonen stayed to ask more questions and fixed a pot of coffee for Mari.
CHAPTER 15
SATURDAY, 5:00 P.M.
VIHTI HIGHWAY, HELSINKI
“I’m tired…and hungry,” Eero Salmela complained from the passenger seat.
“Not cold though?” Suhonen asked. He was driving an unmarked squad car southbound along the Vihti Highway. They went through a roundabout and stopped at a red light. The rain had started again and the Peugeot’s wipers were hard at work. Headlights from the oncoming traffic glared off the wet asphalt.
“That I could’ve helped with,” continued Suhonen, pointing to the switch for the seat-heater.
The light changed and the car moved on.
About a half-hour earlier, Salmela had called his friend and asked to be picked up at a bus stop along the Vihti Highway. That had worked for the Suhonen.
“Let’s go for coffee at the Teboil station,” Salmela suggested as they approached the new Hakamäen Avenue. The hundred-fifty-million-dollar road and tunnel project had been completed a year ago. It had gotten off to a catastrophic start when a multi-car pileup had shut it down on opening day. Despite the new tunnel, the road was plagued by congestion even more than before. The newspapers called Hakamäen Avenue “Finland’s most expensive parking lot.” Now, on a Saturday, there was little traffic.