Jarkko Sipila - Darling

“This is the jail and you’ve been arrested. You’re being suspected of a crime,” the guard said and closed the hatch with a clank.

Korpivaara’s shoulders slumped as he stood behind the door. Drained of strength, he tried to pound the door one more time. He turned and saw a toilet in front of the bed, which was bolted to the wall. Two seats were attached to the opposite wall and some sort of a legless table was bolted between them.

He walked to the toilet and urinated.

Goddammit, what happened? He sat down on the bunk and buried his face in his hands. His mind was fuzzy like a TV screen with static.

His throat was parched. The previous day’s events were a blur and they came to him in a reverse order. At the police station he was stripped and handed overalls a size too big. He was riding in the back of a police van. He was arrested in the Alamo Bar. Beer and more beer. He unlocked the apartment door for the police.

“Oh, shit,” Korpivaara cursed. He tried to see what time it was, but he didn’t have his watch. And of course his phone wasn’t in his pocket. Rubbing his head, he tried to remember what had happened. He felt miserable. He had a headache and his skin was clammy.

Korpivaara walked to the small window at the end of the bed, but the frosted glass only let him see that it was dark outside. He lay down on the bunk, breathing heavily…in…out…in…out. He folded his arms on his chest like a body awaiting burial. Maybe that’s what he was.

Thinking about death made him think of his father. He was glad Rauno wasn’t around to see this. He had been a big enough disappointment to his dad already. He closed his eyes and could see his dad lying in the hospital bed, breathing in and out slowly, just like he was doing now. Inhale slowly and exhale a little faster. His eyes are almost closed, his mouth open under the oxygen mask. The mask is different from those in airplanes; its see-through profile is shaped like a hawk’s nose, with a tube coming from an oxygen tank. Korpivaara covers his mouth with his hand.

His father has an IV in his arm for fluids to keep his body hydrated. But the nurses couldn’t give him too much, because his body can’t process it. He gets morphine in his left shoulder at regular intervals to keep the pain at bay. That’s hospice care-to give a person a chance to leave this world gracefully and without too much pain. The nurse comes in to turn his dad. Rauno isn’t capable of doing that on his own.

There was no hope of recovery. The nurse just told the family to stay strong. Jorma held his father’s warm hand, feeling his pulse.

Why wasn’t anyone here to hold his hand now? Oh, how Jorma wished that someone would.

* * *

It was close to 2 A.M. Kulta, wearing white paper overalls and blue plastic shoe covers, opened the bedroom closet, yawning. The guy obviously didn’t bother folding his T-shirts or matching up his socks. All his clothes were in jumbled piles on the shelves. He did have some order to the mess-his dirty laundry was in a heap on the floor and the clean clothes piled in the closet-unlike some of the drug holes Kulta had seen.

Apparently, Jorma Korpivaara didn’t make his bed or change his sheets very often. The floor was sticky with stains, and trash was scattered all over.

Korpivaara’s apartment was the fourth place they searched. It was in the building the farthest back from Nӓyttelijӓ Street. Kulta and Kohonen had looked through the apartments of the other three suspects but hadn’t found much. No blood-stained clothing in the trash, no knife, or anything else directly linked to the case. Each was just as sloppy as Korpivaara’s, though. They all lived alone-probably why they had time to hang around at the Alamo Bar.

Kulta checked the bathroom first, looking for blood stains someone might’ve left while washing their hands. He noticed pale stains in the sink-blood or something else? Forensics would have to find out.

“Come here and look,” Kohonen yelled from the living room.

Kulta noticed a stack of crime novels next to a pile of porn DVDs. Empty beer cans littered the floor. Color photos were scattered around the printer and laptop. The photos were of a woman posing in various sexual positions, and the face belonged to Laura Vatanen.

“Look at her face,” Kohonen urged.

“The photos are fakes,” Kulta said. The pictures were clumsy attempts of attaching Laura Vatanen’s face to bodies of different women.

“I wonder if he posted these online or just kept them for his own pleasure,” Kohonen said.

“Let’s take the laptop to the pros.”

Kulta found a photo album under some junk in the closet. On the first page was a black-and-white photo of a young couple holding a baby dressed in a christening gown. The parents looked solemn. Kulta thought the man even looked angry. The caption under the photo read Jorma’s Christening August 17, 1969.

On the next few pages were pictures of a smiling child playing in the snow and on a beach. Some of the photos showed a mother or father, others the whole family. The colors had faded. One photo was of Jorma standing square-shouldered and proud next to a red bicycle in front of a green house. The last one was of him as an eighteen-year-old on a camping trip. Two more pictures had been glued on the pages, but later torn off.

Kulta stared at the camping photo trying to pinpoint what was wrong with it. Korpivaara was older, but his face looked different somehow-perhaps softer. Kulta could compare the photo to Korpivaara himself at the station. Hoping to find a current picture of him, Kulta rummaged through the closet but had no luck.

He looked through the rest of the closets quickly and went into the living room.

“Check the kitchen,” Kohonen ordered.

It was more of a kitchenette, with a stove, a sink, and a fridge. Half a dozen dirty plates sat in the sink, one of them with leftover pasta. A bread knife with a long blade lay on the cutting board-it fit the profile of the murder weapon. Kulta didn’t see any blood on it, so he left it alone. He remembered Korpivaara saying that he had cut his hand while slicing bread. That hadn’t happened here, since there were no traces of blood. Crumbs were scattered on the table.

Kulta looked in the fridge and saw a quart of milk, half a bottle of Coke, a stick of butter, sausage, and Koff beer cans-it must have been this week’s special at the neighborhood grocery store. It occurred to him that the inside of his fridge used to look just like this before his girlfriend moved in. And his clothes used to be a muddled mess. Kulta peeked into the cabinet under the sink and saw an empty trash container.

“He took the trash out,” he hollered to Kohonen.

“Shit!” Kohonen cursed in the living room. “Dumpster diving-that’s all we need.”

* * *

Kulta stepped into the dumpster shed, and the dim motion-sensor light came on. The detective’s Maglite cast a beam around the space, and he saw four black trash containers, a blue one for cardboard, a green one for paper, and two smaller brown cans for compost.

Kulta checked under the containers and the spaces between them. He quickly rummaged through the cardboard and paper containers.

“Yep, yep,” he said. “Now the real fun starts.”

Kohonen was only a little over five foot two, so her job was to hold the lid open. Kulta, who was six three, could easily reach inside.

“One question,” Kulta said. “How do I know which one is Korpivaara’s trash bag?”

“Skip the fancy white ones with a Stockmann logo and focus on the Alepa yellow. We’re not interested in common household trash but possible clothes and such that would’ve been thrown in.”

“Yeah, the soft packages,” Kulta agreed. He was still wearing the paper coveralls and now slipped work gloves over the rubber ones. Kulta handed the Maglite to his colleague, and she lifted the first lid.