Jarkko Sipila - Cold Trail

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.

Several 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.

“Anna,” 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.

“What is it?”

“Get 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.

“The 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.

“You want me to answer that?”

“No,” 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.

“The 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.

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

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.

The 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.

“Hello,” he said in a serious tone.

“Hey,” 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.

None of the orderlies responded immediately. Takamäki wondered whether that was a bad sign.

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

“Umm, 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?”

Buzz-cut nodded.

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

“He 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.

“This 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.”

“The 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.

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

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

* * *

In the dark house, Karppi kept his shotgun trained on Repo at a distance of maybe ten, twelve feet.

“Were those your friends?”

“Who?” Repo wondered. He was still holding the Luger, but the barrel was pointed at the floor.

“Those two who just left.”

“No,” Repo grunted. “They were cops. Looking for me.”

Now it was Karppi’s turn to laugh. “You did hightail it out of that restaurant pretty fast. Is that what you came here to get?”

Repo gathered the old man meant the pistol. “No, but it was there in its old spot in the hatbox.”

“Erik told me the story.”

Repo wondered which story his father had told his neighbor. “The war thing?”

Karppi nodded.

According to the story, Erik Repo had been given the gun right after World War II, as a young man of fifteen, by an old vet who wanted Erik to safeguard it for him. Apparently it had been used to shoot more than a few Russkies-the rumors were that several Soviet commissars had been executed at close range. The vet had been more than happy to give it away, so it couldn’t be traced back to him.

“This gun is the real deal,” Repo said, activating the safety with his thumb and shoving the gun into his waistband. “But we don’t need any more bodies.”

“We sure don’t,” Karppi agreed, lowering the barrel of his shotgun to the floor.