Jarkko Sipila - Cold Trail

Joutsamo checked the numbers on the houses. “Two more, then it’s the next one. At that streetlamp.”

Suhonen slowed down and the car slid past the house, going under 20 mph. The place was dark.

“I didn’t see any movement,” Joutsamo said.

“And you’re saying you would have been able to tell if there had been?”

“Of course. Should we wait or go in to have a look?”

Suhonen turned right at the next corner and started circling around the block. It would attract less attention than flipping a U-turn on a residential street. Joutsamo didn’t get a response, because Suhonen’s phone rang. It was his fiancée, calling to ask if and when he might be coming home. Suhonen said he didn’t know. The call was a brief one, and Joutsamo chose not to comment on it.

Suhonen returned to the situation at hand: “We can’t hang out in the car on a residential street like this. We’d need to get a van or do it from one of the neighboring houses. Maybe we should just go have a look and see what there is to see, if anything.”

“Yeah, but if we’re going by the book, I suppose we ought to have some reason to believe that the suspect’s in there,” Joutsamo said. Once the prison had asked for the help of the authorities in hunting down Repo, the search had turned into a police investigation. “And we don’t have a warrant to conduct a search of that house. Our job is to find the convict.”

Suhonen grunted. “If you say so. You’re the one who’s always talking about studying to become a lieutenant, but we wouldn’t be here in the first place if we didn’t believe Repo could be in that house, now would we?”

He parked a few houses down from the target. “You know, I’m a ‘probable cause’ kind of guy,” he continued, as they stepped out of the car.

“In what sense?” Joutsamo asked.

“Police ops, of course. ‘Probable cause’ is a pretty good foundation for any operation. If I have probable cause to suspect something, I can do whatever I want. All I need is to meet the criteria for ‘probable cause.’”

Joutsamo laughed, but she also checked to make sure the bulletproof vest she was wearing under her sweater was on straight. Her leather jacket was open, and her gun was holstered under her arm.

“Go around the back?” she suggested.

“I don’t think there is a back door. At least there wasn’t one at that gang member’s house, and this one looks the same.”

“Are we going to ring the doorbell?”

“No,” Suhonen said, revealing a small, screwdriver-like device he had in his hand.

“You have a jigger?” Joutsamo wondered. You could open a standard lock in a split second with a jigger, if you know how.

“Yup,” Suhonen said. “Search warrant regulations state you can only force entry when circumstances demand. This way we won’t be forcing our way, plus we won’t need a repairman to fix the door.”

Joutsamo would have been interested in finding out where Suhonen had gotten the burglary tool in the first place, not to mention where he had learned to use it, but Suhonen wouldn’t have told her. Besides, there was no point entering the premises making noise, so she kept her mouth shut.

* * *

Timo Repo was dreaming about the ferry cruise to Sweden. His dad was carrying two bottles of Coca-Cola to the table for the boys and Carlsberg elephant beers for the grown-ups. Everyone was smiling, but no one was saying anything. The young woman at the next table looked Timo in the eye. Repo recognized her as his wife, and she was smiling, too.

A shadow fell between them and quickly disappeared. It wasn’t part of the dream, and Repo’s eyes popped open. He couldn’t see anything out the window, but he was certain that someone had moved under the streetlamp.

He cautiously got up. Was that rustling coming from outside? Repo snatched his gun and his coat from the coat rack. He wiped the floor with the sleeve of his black suit just in case any water drops had fallen from the coat, and then he slunk into the bedroom. There was a bullet in the barrel of his gun, but he decided to hide in the closet. This wasn’t the time for a confrontation yet.

* * *

Suhonen carefully twisted the jigger, now in the lock, from a small crank at its tail end. The device was designed to move the detainer disks into the same position as a key would.

It took Suhonen less than twenty seconds to open the lock. The door creaked slightly as Suhonen pulled it by the handle. Joutsamo winced. The noise was definitely loud enough for someone who was awake inside to have heard it, but had it been loud enough to wake someone up? Not necessarily.

Suhonen pulled out his Glock 22, crouched down, and entered first. He didn’t linger in the doorway-the street light behind him effectively turned him into a silhouette target. He edged right and waited there against the wall for a moment. It was darker inside than it was outside, and his eyes needed a moment to get used to the dimness.

The house smelled like it had been uninhabited for a while.

The living room appeared empty. Suhonen carefully rose and advanced, hugging the wall. Joutsamo followed, silently closing the outside door.

Suhonen waited at the corner of the dining room while Joutsamo slowly crept ahead, circling around behind the sofa. It didn’t take long before she had a view of both the dining room and the kitchen in their entirety. They were empty, too. Joutsamo gestured Suhonen onwards. The bathroom came first, and Suhonen quickly checked it.

There was only one room left. Suhonen pulled open the bedroom door. The detectives crouched down on either side of the doorway. The interior walls of the old house wouldn’t offer much protection from bullets. Suhonen glimpsed in quickly. There were curtains in front of the windows, but they let in enough light for him to note the twin bed in the middle of the room. On the left wall there was a desk and on the right, a closet.

Suhonen rose and entered. Joutsamo followed.

“Empty,” Suhonen said, holstering his gun. He flipped on the light switch next to the door.

* * *

Repo stayed as quiet as possible at the back of the cramped closet. The coats were in front of him, but he could still make out the strip of light between the closet and the floor. The old clothes were dusty, and the pungent funk of mothballs filled his nose. He felt like coughing, but he chased the thought from his mind. He was clenching his pistol tightly. The grip felt sweaty.

Repo heard a woman’s voice, “Yeah, that would have been a little too lucky, finding him crashed out here on the bed.”

Of course: they were cops, Repo thought. That made him momentarily reconsider the circumstances and the resolution he had come to in the closet. Maybe he should shoot after all. A burglar or two he might have been able to catch off guard, but police officers? There were at least two of them, but there might be as many as ten.

Yes, he’d pull the trigger. He wasn’t going back to that cell.

“Too bad he isn’t,” answered a male voice.

“Should we have a look around?” Repo heard the woman ask. The footfalls approached and stopped at the door. She must have been standing right in front of the closet, because the strip of light at the floor dimmed.

Repo could barely breathe now. If the closet door opened, he would shoot.

“No one’s slept in that bed. Those blankets are army-regulation sharp,” the man said.

“Okay. I’m going to have a quick look at the desk and the kitchen. You take the living room.”

The man paused. “What is it you want me to look for?”

“Photographs of Repo. Friends, names, anything that will help us with the case.”

“Okay. There was some mail there in the entryway, but it’s going to be Old Man Repo’s.”