James Thompson: Lucifer's tears

Milo and I examine the kitchen, to make sure the victim can sit in it without contaminating evidence when he comes back inside. I see Rein Saar in the hall while he and the uniform put on paper suits. He looks like he took a shower in blood.

Milo and I walk over to him. “I’m Inspector Vaara. This is Detective Sergeant Nieminen. Do you feel that you require immediate medical attention, or can you stay here for a while so I can talk to you?”

He nods. He can wait. I instruct him and the uniform to sit at the kitchen table.

I turn to Milo. “Let’s go look at Iisa Filippov.”

“The bedroom is a fucking mess,” the uniform says. “Have fun.”

We go to the bedroom. The uniform wasn’t exaggerating. Blood soaks the bed around the corpse. Fine mists of blood feather the walls and ceiling. Her murder speaks of both method and rage. The smell of fresh blood and scorched flesh, menthol cigarettes, as well as urine and feces, is strong.

We need duplicate documentation so there’s no chance of evidence from our initial investigation being lost. I take a digital audio recorder and notepad out of my coat pocket. “Which one do you want?” I ask Milo.

“I’ll write,” he says.

I start recording. “The victim, identified as Iisa Filippov, is located in the bedroom of a man identified as Rein Saar. The bedroom itself is about a hundred and thirty square feet and unexceptional. It contains a standard queen-size bed in a corner, headboard and left side of the bed against walls. The victim’s body lies on the right side of the bed. Other furnishings include a dresser, a single wooden chair, and a nightstand with a reading lamp and a woman’s purse on it. There’s one closet, not yet inspected. About halfway up, the closet door has an approx two-inch hole bored through it. The room shows no damage to indicate struggle.”

I open her purse and rifle through it. “The purse contains a Finnish passport issued to Iisa Filippov. From the photo, I believe the victim is indeed Filippov. It also contains a wallet, makeup and related cosmetic accessories, a pack of Belmont cigarettes and orange Bic lighter, a cell phone and a compact Samsung camcorder.” I unfold a sheet of paper. “And a copy of Rein Saar’s work schedule.”

I give Milo a moment to write and catch up, then continue.

“Filippov appears to be a woman approx age thirty, five foot five inches tall, athletic build, about a hundred and twenty-five pounds.”

I’m careful about what I say, because the recording may be entered into evidence, but before being beaten to a pulp, she must have been damned good-looking. Tanned. Long black hair cut in bangs. One eye is burned through, I guess by a cigarette, but the other is open and also nearly black in color. Great figure, something like 36-23-36.

“She’s nude and lying face-up on the bed. Her feet are bound tight with several wraps of duct tape. Her hands are behind her back, underneath her. I kneel down and look. They’re bound in the same manner. The remainder of the roll of tape is on the nightstand. Her mouth is stuffed with women’s socks. Her clothes-jeans, sweater, panties and bra-are wadded up in a pile on the chair, but I don’t see her socks there, so I think the ones in her mouth belong to her.”

“Care to add anything?” I ask Milo.

He shakes his head. “Not yet.”

Although this murder scene is gruesome, Milo doesn’t seem fazed by it, shows no sign of coming unglued, like he did last night when we investigated Rauha Anttila’s death.

“Filippov has been struck multiple times with a blunt instrument. Her forehead is split open. Her left arm is broken just above the elbow. Bone protrudes through the skin. Her chest, on the right side, is flattened, suggesting that multiple ribs are caved in. Nothing in the room seems heavy or hard enough to have inflicted this kind of damage.”

Milo takes a look around. The place hasn’t been dusted for fingerprints yet, so with one gloved finger, he opens the closet door. We look in. I see only men’s clothing and shoes on the floor. A stool is inside, a closet seems a strange place for it. “Nothing here either,” he says.

Then I notice equestrian clothing on the shelf overtop the clothes rack: shirts, breeches, a jacket and helmet. Interesting.

We go back to Iisa’s body. “Filippov has in the neighborhood of fifty burn marks on her body. Most are located on her abdomen, her genital area, her nipples, her face, and one through her left eye. The diameter and circular shape of the burns indicate she was burned with lit cigarettes. The wounds could have been inflicted after death, but I think they were probably used as a method of meting out pain. She voided her bowels either while being murdered, from fear or pain or both, or maybe upon death. Feces and urine are on the sheets between her legs.”

“It’s enough to puke a dog off a gut wagon,” Milo says.

I point at the audio recorder, press a warning finger to my lips and continue. “The blood pool pattern around the victim indicates that another body lay next to her while she bled. The outline of a head, arm and torso are clear. The resident of the apartment, Rein Saar, claims to have woken up next to the victim and found her dead. This lends some credence to his story. Most unusual is that Iisa Filippov has been struck dozens, perhaps more than a hundred times, with a light instrument at high velocity. It’s notable that her face around the lips was beaten with particular severity.”

The tone of my description is neutral, but the scene reeks of torture, horror and agony. Iisa’s face is nearly destroyed by cigarette burns, whipped to pieces, scored by marks and welts. Deep and wide-open wounds that ooze.

“She was struck on the same surface areas, mostly on the face and torso, multiple times. It appears that the first lash abraded flesh, and that subsequent strikes deepened the wounds. This resulted in significant blood spatter. The walls and ceiling are misted with patterns of thousands of blood droplets that I estimate are an average of two millimeters in size.”

I hear the front door open, then voices. The forensics team is here.

Milo points. “Look at this little spot on the wall,” Milo says. “Whatever the killer used to hit her smacked it and left a small tongue-shaped bloodstain. Given the clothes in his closet, I’d say Rein Saar beat her to death with a riding crop.”

“A good guess,” I say.

I go to the closet, get down on my knees and look at the floor. A bloody crop is propped up against the inside wall. I don’t touch it, leave it in place for the forensics team to photograph it. “Found it.”

Milo comes over and takes a look.

I speak into the tape recorder. “In the bedroom closet, we discovered the probable weapon used in the lashing attack. A riding crop, a little over three feet in length, with a leather tongue on the end. It appears to be made of fiberglass, has a leather-wrapped handle, and a loop on the end to secure grip.”

We return to the bedside. Both of us stare down at her for a moment. Milo asks me, “What do you think was the cause of death?”

“She took a terrible beating, but there’s no arterial spurting. I doubt if it was blood loss. She’s got those socks stuffed in her mouth. I think he beat her with the horse whip until he got bored with it, then maybe just held her nose until she suffocated and died.”

“I tend to agree,” Milo says.

“Maybe we should call Saska Lindgren and have him come take a look,” I say. “He’s the bloodstain-pattern expert.”

Milo shakes his head. “No fucking way.”

“Why not?”

“This is my first big homicide case and I’m not sharing it with anybody.”

I raise my eyebrows.

He flushes, embarrassed at his gaffe. “Except you, of course. Listen, I’m going to tell you something personal.”